


Imperfections 8: One warm Line

by Dasha (Dasha_mte)



Series: Imperfections [8]
Category: Monk - Fandom, Stargate Atlantis, The Sentinel, due South
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-03-02
Updated: 2011-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:18:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 43,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dasha_mte/pseuds/Dasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim's finally getting his feet under him. The rest of the world? Not so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imperfections 8: One warm Line

**Author's Note:**

> Here is where I thank Martha for her ongoing support and Kitty for her excellent beta. She's *good* at it, which is wonderful. I'm grateful.
> 
> Warnings for language and minor violence
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or ideas, and I am only borrowing them from Pet Fly, Alliance Atlantis, Gecko, and so forth for fun. I'm not even going to whine when the time comes to give them back. Honest.

Late May

Monk's new office was the former broom closet next to the forensic electronics lab. The space was tiny, and the dull walls were decorated only with an inspirational poster and a photo of Monk's last guide, his wife Trudy. As offices went, it wasn't much, but it gave Monk and the other analysts a chance to get away from each other.

From his seat behind his ruthlessly tidy desk, Monk looked up at Jim in mystification. "Let me get this straight. You're leading a team out into the wilderness."

Put like that, it made Jim feel slightly sheepish for some reason. "Well, not into the wilderness. We're not even leaving the county, obviously."

"But there will be--" Monk struggled to contain his repulsion. "Trees and leaves and bugs and-and-and dirt?"

"Yes."

"You're going to wander around in the woods, probably all day, looking for a criminal who deals in dead animal parts?"

"Yes," Jim said, and now he had to work not to smile, because, really, Monk's expression was very funny.

"Really, dead animal parts. The actual parts of dead animals?" He shook his head in wonder and horror.

"It's a criminal enterprise that runs into the hundreds of millions," Jim said.

"And you're inviting me to go with you?"

"I take it that's a 'no' then," Jim said.

Monk blinked. "Thank you for offering." He waved a hand unhappily. "Have a good time."

Jim gave up and headed back upstairs to join Blair and Simon, who were making final arrangements for the operation. "Well, you were right, Chief. He wasn't interested."

Blair looked up from the map he was studying. "You're kidding. Really?"

Jim shook his head. "I just don't get it. A chance to get out of the city for a few hours. Away from the stink, the noise...."

Blair laughed. "Away from indoor plumbing, climate control, his supply of bottled water."

Weird. But that was Adrian Monk all over. It was hard to imagine a sentinel preferring downtown Cascade to the woods, but then again Marcia also did better in the city than she had in open country. It was still hard to imagine. "Yeah, whatever. We ready to go?"

"As soon as Simon gets off the phone."

The guy they were after was named Sid Polk. Officially speaking, he was some kind of hunting guide. About five hours earlier, his partner, Jake Marshall, had ruined Jim's day off (and Simon's and Blair's) fishing by being killed by a bear he was trying to harvest illegally.

They'd had only the one day off, so they hadn't gone far, just out to a fishing reserve Simon used to take Daryl to when he was a kid. Sandburg had never been fly-fishing before. He had smelled a little bit nervous, a little bit uncomfortable; he'd been worried that he wouldn't be able to keep up, that he'd embarrass Jim in front of Simon. He'd lost his worry in the first half-hour. The water. The sun. The wind. The low mountain rising up behind them. And fly-fishing--Blair had picked it up fairly quickly. He'd caught a fish.

They had all heard the gunshot. Its low frequencies had carried well in the open air, bouncing sonic afterimages off the ridge to the north and the rock face to the west. Only Jim had heard the screams. If he hadn't been a sentinel, they might never have known about the hunting accident and the DB. And the poaching. (Jim had never gone after bear, but he knew you didn't use a fully-automatic to do it.)

So instead of spending the afternoon eating a lazy picnic lunch, they were going after the second poacher. Half a mile below Polk's cabin, they pulled off onto an old logging road and turned the corner so they were out of sight. Simon and the two patrol cars would wait there while Jim did a little reconnaissance.

It turned out that Sandburg was about as quiet in the woods as a herd of elephants. Jim glanced back just as his partner's foot came down on a broken branch that was hidden under leaf-fall. It gave with a snap that made Jim wince. Well, okay. Fine. That was next. They would take up woodcraft just as soon as they were finished with self-defense. At least Blair wasn't uncomfortable in the woods. Or afraid. If, like Monk, Sandburg jumped at every bug and speck of dirt, well, Jim would have a real problem on his hands. This was just a deficiency in skill set.

Impatient at the time it took but unwilling to risk breaking cover because of Sandburg's astonishing racket, Jim circled around the cabin by a wide margin and came around on the bench just above.

Long before he was in position to see anything, Jim heard movement and smelled fresh auto exhaust. One hand on Blair's arm so he wouldn't have to expend attention keeping track of him, Jim crept them slowly forward until, from the cover of a large rock, he had a good view of the cabin below. Jackpot.

Sid was rushing around, hurriedly packing his truck with ammunition, weapons, and what Monk would have called 'pieces of dead animal.' Jim clicked his radio and said quietly, "He's here. And the evidence is all over the place, right in plain sight."

"Is he alone?" Simon asked. Jim had the ear piece turned down as low as it would go, but still, it was like being shouted at.

"Give me a moment," Jim said, pushing his attention closer and closer to the little building.

Beside him, Blair pulled out a pair of binoculars. Jim wondered how far away from the cabin they were, that normal eyes would need help.

"He's alone. But let's wait until he packs up the heavy artillery before we move," Jim said.

"Everybody stand by."

"Man, I'd hate to think about how many of those pelts are from endangered animals," Blair whispered.

The animal pelts were the money in this thing, but Jim's eyes were on the guns "A D-3, an F.N.... We'll be able to bust this guy on weapons violations alone."

He heard a car coming down the main road, from the opposite direction than the one the police had come in. Probably, it wasn't related, but the narrow paved road wasn't really wide enough for passing. "Stand by, Simon. We've got a vehicle coming."

The car paused, and Jim thought he heard a door open, but no one got out. The door shut and the car continued. It turned up the dirt track leading to Polk's cabin. "It's coming this way." Jim's mind turned to the worst case scenario of a lost civilian wandering into a major weapons bust. A family of picnickers, maybe. "All units hold your position."

Tires crunching on the rutted road, an ancient Buick Riviera pulled up at the cabin, and two men got out. Polk picked a rifle out of the pile and pointed it at them. One man was a sandy blond, the other dark-haired. They both had their backs to Jim. "Hey," the blond said, "take it easy, Sid. It's just us. We had an appointment, remember?"

Polk lowered the weapon, but said, "Something's happened. The deal's off."

This didn't go over well. "What do you mean the deal's off?" the other one said.

"We came out here from Chicago!"

Polk turned his back on them and picked up his packing where he left off. "My partner got killed by a bear. I'm closing up and clearing out before the cops show. If you've got any sense, you'd beat it, too."

"Hey, buddy, I'm sorry about your partner, but a deal's a deal."

"I told you, damn it!" Polk shouted.

"Look, we brought the cash. $10,000." The dark haired man held out a yellow envelope.

Jim pressed his radio and said softly, "We got a deal going down here. We're going to be able to bust them in the act."

"If you're closing up, you're going to need traveling money." This was too good. Jim was sorry he hadn't brought a camera. "We want to see the merchandise."

Polk finally gave in. "All right," he said, "but we got to be fast."

He led his customers over to a tarp erected over piles of pelts and other anonymous animal parts. Jim could almost smell it--musk, traces of old meat and mold, fur, something strange--sour and rank, but sweet, too....

"Jim? You with me?" Blair's gentle whisper was like being hit in the head with a board. He'd gotten lost, working the sentinel deal on all that pungent, weird crap. In the clearing below, Polk was already handing the two men a sack. "It's all there. Elk horns, bear paws, gall bladders. The whole shopping list. Okay?"

Thank you, Chief, Jim thought. He was present in time to watch the money and contraband change hands. "All units, move in." He heard the engines start below and estimated the time it would take to climb the short dirt track. Plenty of time to make it down the hill and join the party.

A movement at the edge of his vision made him jump. It was only an animal. A reindeer. A long, long way from Santa Claus, but huge, and less than ten feet away. He tapped Blair in the shoulder and motioned him to go in the other direction. The last thing they needed was this animal making a racket and alerting Polk. "Ease away from him. Go around. Move," he whispered.

Blair looked around. "Around what?"

Jim looked again. It was big, not like those cute things on Christmas cards. The rack of antlers was huge. It was much closer to Jim than any wild animal had any business being. Jim sniffed discretely, looking for the scent of illness or injury. If the animal was hurt or out of its mind, it might hurt them.

"Jim? What is it?"

"That reindeer." He couldn't smell anything, not even an earthy animal-smell.

At the same moment that Blair said, "What reindeer?" the reindeer said--clearly, impossibly--"Caribou."

Jim's stomach sank. Not real. A hallucination in broad daylight, while on a job was bad enough, but probably this was much worse than that. Probably, it was an hallucination that meant something. His mind scrambled and stumbled, bracing for a threat, franticly guessing at what kind.

The sound of tires turning off pavement snapped him around. He all but leaped over Sandburg and flew around the rock. The grade wasn't steep and the footing--exposed rocks and the soft fallings from a stand of pines--was both easy and silent.

Polk was trying to get rid of his company. "Well, you've got what you came for. Beat it."

"We have a client who's looking for eagle feathers. He's willing to pay big money."

"I don't have time for this--" Through the trees, Jim saw Polk's head shoot up. He'd heard the cars. Police sirens chirped once, shattering the quiet. Jim burst from the trees even as Polk reached for his shotgun. "All right, nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. Cascade Police Department!"

In a shower of dirt, the black and whites piled in behind Polk's truck and the Buick. Cops spilled out in a flurry of weapons and shouted orders. Polk straightened and put his hands on his head.

"You have got to be kidding!" the dark haired buyer shouted, turning around.

"Hold it!" snapped the nearest cop, but the buyer was already frozen, staring at Jim.

"Ellison," he said. "Well, doesn't that just put the icing on the cake? My partner's in the woods. You wanna tell these jokers not to shoot him?"

"Vecchio," Jim acknowledged, wondering just how big the operation was that he had just FUBARed.

"Sooner is better than later, if you don't mind."

"Back off," Jim said to the uniforms. "These two are feds, sort of. They've got a partner in the woods. He's a sentinel."

Simon was disgustedly chomping on an unlit cigar, looking Vecchio and his partner Kowalski over. "You know boys, if you were going to stop by you might have dropped us a card." He gave Jim a dirty look. "You didn't mention anybody in the woods."

Jim winced. "I didn't know he was there."

Benton Fraser jogged around from behind the cabin. "Thank you," he said. "That's very gratifying." He sent an apologetic look toward his partners. "I'm sorry. I found their trail, but I was too far away to realize what was happening in time."

Vecchio shot a dark look at the milling Cascade cops. One of them was photographing the piles of furs and cartons of desiccated something. "It wasn't your fault."

"Don't worry about it," Kowalski said quickly. "These things happen. We'll think of something."

"We'll think of something?" Vecchio snapped. "This was our best lead."

Blair came out of the woods with Diefenbaker trotting just behind him. "Is this everybody?" Simon asked.

Jim glanced at Fraser, who nodded.

"Wonderful!" Simon growled. "Gather up the evidence and pack it in." He turned to Polk, who had been cuffed and searched and left sitting on a cut stump. "You're not, say Secret Service? No? Coast Guard? Customs? Texas Rangers? Glad to hear it."

***

As far as Blair could tell, the bust was about as big a disaster as you could get without somebody actually dying. Yes, they'd gotten Polk, his illegal weapons, and thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of dollars in animal contraband. Unfortunately, they'd interrupted a sting mounted by a joint effort between the United States and Canada. This was a fairly big deal. Simon would get yelled at over this screw-up. It was an embarrassment for the entire department.

Blair got out of the way. There was a woodpile beside the door to the cabin. He wiggled the logs at a low spot. They seemed stable, so he sat down. Most of the activity was centered around documenting and packing the boxes of fur and preserved flesh. Polk was already gone, and a van was on its way to help carry off the evidence. They'd be here for at least another hour.

Benton Fraser came over. He was dressed in the astonishingly vivid Mountie uniform. He sat beside Blair. "You know, you have to be careful of woodpiles. They're frequently occupied by snakes."

Blair felt a shiver, but he didn't jump. "Any snakes here?"

"No. No, there aren't."

"I'm glad," Blair said. "So." He considered small talk, but, no, this was embarrassing, but they might as well face it. "Wow, this was a real disaster."

"I'm afraid so, yes."

"Um, sorry."

"It was hardly your fault," Fraser said easily. "It's a setback, but nothing we can't move beyond." He looked around, his gaze encompassing the clearing, the cabin, the truck. "Blair, I need access to the scene."

"You have jurisdiction. You have the whole federal thing going."

Fraser's eyes shifted to Simon, but his attention was still on Blair. "If we demand jurisdictional priority from the local law enforcement community, what we gain in access we lose in cooperation. I think the pipeline we're looking for might be here in Cascade. We can't spend this investigation fighting you."

Oh. "I'll talk to Simon. Jim will want a look around, too."

Fraser nodded. "So I would assume."

Blair tapped Vecchio and led him over to Simon. "What kind of paperwork are we going to need for interdepartmental cooperation?" Blair asked.

Simon grunted. "Us and--who? Who are you guys working for, anyway?"

Vecchio smiled a little. "Fraser and I are employed by the RCMP. Kowalski is ATF. Technically. He's on loan to the State Department. At the moment, we're all on loan to American Fish and Wildlife."

Simon glared hard at Blair, and then glanced over at Jim, who was walking the edges of the clearing. "Joint operation?"

Blair glanced at Vecchio. "It's the best offer we're going to get. And we want it. Jim's not going to want to give up the case, not now."

"Don't make me regret this. I'll start the paperwork." Simon turned away and began to gather his men.

Vecchio sighed. "When I was a cop, I always hated the feds."

"So there's no irony here?" Blair asked.

"Heh. Most of the time I'm hip deep in irony, kid."

Blair joined Jim at the tree line. "Anything?" he asked.

"Nothing we can use," Jim answered distractedly.

"Well, come on. You and Fraser need to work out how you're going to split up the scene."

Jim brightened. "Great. So we're--?"

"Not off the case."

Ray Kowalski headed back to town with Simon to start the formal liaising that would make the entire day look like something other than an inter-jurisdictional cock-up, while the uniforms finished packing the evidence for transport. Jim and Fraser went over Polk's truck before allowing it to be taken away. Then, as things got quiet, they began their search of the cabin.

The old building was small; a single room, dim and dirty. Vecchio recoiled visibly and planted himself just outside the doorway. He looked down and scowled. The tiny porch was rickety and half-rotten. Jim and Ben brushed past him, pausing just inside to glance at each other. Blair was a little surprised; he knew that Jim and the other sentinel were well acquainted, but he'd never seen Jim concede anything to a fed before. Polite, yes, he was polite. He never said anything that could be cast as inappropriate. This was the first time, though, that Blair saw even a trace of real respect. Ben shrugged and motioned Jim to go first.

Jim started to the left of the door and swept the room clockwise. He moved slowly, shaking out dirty laundry with gloved hands, flipping through a discarded girlie magazine.

What Ben did was like nothing Blair had ever seen. Admittedly his experience was limited to Jim and Adrian Monk, and their styles were very different. But neither of them moved as fast as Ben, and neither was as confident. He stepped to the center of the room, closed his eyes, and took a single, deep breath through his nose. His eyes popped open and he turned his head, body following, in two swift circles. How the hell could he process that much information that fast? Without pausing or hesitating he walked to the closet. There was a ratty old coat hanging there. Ben swiftly checked the pockets, ran his hands over the rear walls, crossed the room and checked the bed. Except for avoiding bumping into Jim, his movements seemed random to Blair.

Jim was searching the frayed and sagging sofa. "Hey, Chief," he said, "can spiders bite through latex?"

Blair shuddered. "Let's not find out, hmmm?"

Vecchio took another step away from the open door and said firmly, "So. Can you recommend a local hotel?"

"Room service at the downtown Holiday Inn is very good, but feds usually stay at the Radisson."

"No, not the Radisson. We did that last time." He glanced away. Blair winced inwardly. What had happened in December, that had been hard. Jim seemed to be mostly over it, but he hadn't been held nearly as long as Ben had. Blair couldn't think of a polite way to ask, "So has your guy recovered from the kidnapping and mistreatment yet?"

Jim, tossing a battered box of dusty antlers, straightened suddenly. "Someone's coming," he said.

Ben leaped to the door and hauled Blair and Vecchio inside. Jim slammed the door shut behind them. "Down, get down," he said.

"How close are they?" Ben asked, peeking over the window frame.

Jim leaned his forehead against the closed door, listening. "One car on the gravel road. Definitely coming this way. How do you want to play this?"

"Let him come to us."

"You're not armed, are you?" Jim asked.

Vecchio pulled free and crawled over to the far side of the window. "He's not, but I am. Crap, I just ruined these pants. I swear, Benny--"

Blair peeked up over the windowsill. He could see a car moving through the trees. Ben pulled him back down. From this position, all Blair could see was the rough wood of the wall. Over the pounding of his heart he could hear gravel popping in the access road. The car was coming up slowly.

"He's cautious," Ben whispered.

"If he bails, even better. We can follow him from so far back he'll never know we're behind him." Vecchio had his gun in one hand and his keys in the other.

The car stopped moving. The engine turned off. A car door opened and shut. Blair couldn't hear footsteps himself, but Jim breathed, "He's coming."

Outside, a voice called, "Sid? Jake?"

Jim smiled grimly. "Well, he's not a lost camper."

"Sid?"

"He's turning," Ben whispered.

"Our lucky day," Vecchio answered.

Blair swallowed hard, forcing himself to hold still, hold still, hold still--

The bang of gunfire hit at the same time as the crack of wood and the scream of shattering glass. Blair curled into a ball, hiding his face as glass rained down into his hair and onto his back.

"Freeze, Cascade PD," was, surreally, followed by, "Halt in the name of Fish and Fucking Game!"

"Wildlife," Ben corrected softly. "The Department of Fish and Wildlife."

Another burst of gunfire. This time, the bullets left a hole in the wood not a foot from Blair's left knee.

Above Blair, on both sides, single shots fired. Blair's head shot up. Vecchio was pulling back, he'd fired through the window. Jim had fired through the closed door.

There was utter silence. Maybe. Or maybe Blair's hearing was stunned by all the noise. He braced his hand against the floor and started to get up. He jerked his hand back, bleeding from the glass on the floor. As he moved, more fragments rained down from his hair.

Ben opened the door and went out. Vecchio and Jim followed.

It took Blair two more tries to stand up. Carefully he leaned forward and shook the glass out of his hair. He checked his cut hand in the light from the window to make sure there was no broken glass embedded. Unsteadily, he walked out.

The body was crumpled beside the Buick where he had apparently tried to take cover. There was blood on the ground, and some splashed on the trees. Ben was squatting beside it, arms folded, face impassive. "Is he dead?" Blair asked.

"His heart is still beating. His brain is mostly gone."

"There's not," Blair began. "We can't...?"

"Nothing," Ben said.

Vecchio was pacing, cursing to himself.

Jim was behind them, already on the phone to Simon, who didn't seem to be pleased with the news that he had to come back, and yes, the situation was even messier than when he left.

Ben let out a sigh and went into the cabin. He returned with a blanket, which he laid over the body.

"I think you have to wait for the coroner," Vecchio said.

Ben blinked at that. "My mistake. What is the proper procedure in this jurisdiction?"

"Probably give first aid until help arrives to declare him dead."

"He's dead," Ben said flatly. Then, "I'm not performing first aid on a dead man. That's disrespectful."

"Disrespectful?" Vecchio repeated. "Disrespectful is being dead." He looked down at the covered body. "Asshole," he said.

"Don't blame yourself," Ben said softly, watching his partner from behind lowered eyes.

"Blame myself? Excuse me, blame myself? I did not open fire on a bunch of cops." He kicked a small rock hard enough that it bounced off a tree and came halfway back to him. "Isn't it time we got a break in this stupid case? I mean, we've been working on dead animals for weeks. Dead animals. Don't you think we'd get just one goddamn clue we could use?"

Jim closing his phone said, "Let's search his car." Jim was icy, angry, brittle. Blair moved to join him at the blue sedan parked behind the green Buick, but Jim turned back suddenly and seized Blair with both hands. "Damn it, Sandburg." He had Blair's wrist, bloody palm facing up. "Where's your backpack? Vecchio, his pack is on the porch there."

Ben appeared beside them, holding out a pair of clean handkerchiefs. Who carried handkerchiefs?

"Jim, it's fine. It's nothing, just a little cut," Blair protested.

Jim pulled a bottle of water from the backpack Vecchio brought him and doused the bloody hand.

"It's fine. Jim. I'm okay." A sentinel, under stress, whose partner had been injured. Blair wondered if Jim was going to freak. Or if he was already freaking, but it was internal.

Ben offered a small jar of brown paste. Jim leaned down and sniffed it. "Oh, no," Vecchio protested. "You do not want to use that. It's moose placenta."

"Elk placenta, and I'm out of that. This is mainly sugar and clay."

Jim scooped out a lump and smeared it on the cut before wrapping it in the handkerchiefs. "Oh, so you don't listen to me, but you'll listen to him?" Mostly, the tease was an attempt to see if Jim was interfacing with the normal world at all.

Fortunately, Jim managed a tight smile. "I have no objection to using hokey, naturalist shit on you, only on me."

From behind, Ben was running light fingers over Blair's clothing and through the ends of his hair. "This shirt is ruined. A lot of glass is tangled in the folds. You need to take it all off and shake it out before there is an accident."

So Blair went behind the cabin, stripped down to nothing and shook the glass out of his clothing. The sun had gone behind the hillside, so Blair couldn't see the glass fall. He heard it tinkle as it hit the leaves.

When Blair got back, the others had finished searching the car. There was a small heap of fast food bags piled to one side. The dead suspect's cell phone and gas receipts were neatly bagged and piled. "Nothing we can use?" Blair asked.

"About twenty thousand dollars in cash," Jim said. "Our boys missed out on a really good day, business-wise."

It was full dark when Simon finally arrived. He was followed shortly by Serena and the coroner. Kowalski was on his way with a Federal Marshal. "The fed is your fault," Jim said to Vecchio.

"Bite me," Vecchio said.

Simon collected both their guns, but only Jim's badge. "Fortunately, you are not my problem."

"Simon--" Jim protested.

"Don't start. At least you didn't blow anything up or crash anything. I should be grateful."

Simon took their statements himself. This wasn't the first shooting Blair had witnessed. He'd even done this a couple of times in the fall, when Jim had been officially on 'desk duty.' When Simon was finished with him, he went to sit on the steps to the rickety cabin. Kowalski and the Marshal arrived. The Marshal tried to micromanage Serena and threatened to squeeze the CPD out completely. Kowalski, it turned out, could be very charming when he needed to be. He bounced between them, trying to sooth ruffled feathers.

The little drama played out. There was stomping and yelling and posturing in the harsh lines made by headlights. For the first few months, this part of police work had been interesting. Now, long after it was time to knock off for the day, it was just kind of irritating. Blair breathed in and out, made himself relax. Investing in patience here was necessary. You had to document or you couldn't prosecute. Getting the details right was important. It took as long as it took. All things grow to fullness in their own times.

A man had died. Okay, yes, as Vecchio had said, he was a stupid man (and a criminal, but that was beside the point and wouldn't Naomi have his hide if he even suggested that it was okay to just kill people because they were stupid criminals), but there were still little rituals that had to be carried out. The coroner had to take possession of the body, examine it, take his own pictures (Dan was efficient with these things, but the evening shift photographer was slow and disorganized). Then the body had to be loaded up. Bullets dug out of walls. The car towed away.

Blair sighed.

Jim dropped onto the step beside him. "So. Anyway, looks like we get a couple of days off." The joke had no mirth.

"Sorry, man," Blair said sympathetically.

"Nah. No help for it."

Simon, stepping around them as he strode down the steps, paused long enough to say, "Time off or not, you've promised to meet that big shot from Las Vegas day after tomorrow."

"Aw crap." Blair buried his head in his hands. "Is that this week? I need to buy a new tie."

Jim rolled his eyes. "New tie? What are you trying to impress this guy for? He's the enemy."

"Six sentinels, Jim. In one department. This man could have insights nobody else does."

"He's coming through to discuss a case, not weird ideas about sentinels in packs."

"I might get lucky. Hope springs eternal, man."

***

Blair woke the next morning with the room too bright and the clock saying eight-forty-five. Shocked, he jumped out of bed. Jim's voice answered his movement. "Take it easy, Sandburg. I turned off your alarm."

Blair poked his head out the door. "I slept through it?" he asked.

"No, I turned it off around three this morning. I couldn't sleep, and there was no point to us getting up early." He was at the stove, flipping over bacon. Blair also saw scrambled eggs and toast that was clearly over-buttered. Leave it to Jim to take advantage of a half-hour head start on making breakfast.

"You should have said something if you couldn't sleep."

"The senses were fine." Jim began carrying dishes over to the table. "Grab some plates."

There was something stiff about his movements. Carefully feeling his way, Blair said, "So we have a non-sentinel problem? That's different."

"Not exactly." Jim set down the bacon and took a seat.

"So--?"

"So." Jim took a deep breath. "There may be a problem with the shooting review."

Blair was shocked. "But--you identified yourself. He fired first! You have witnesses. Jim."

"My shot was the kill shot," Jim said softly. "And at the time, I wasn't... arguably, I wasn't in immediate danger. I had cover. I shot him through the door. It can't look good."

Blair blinked. "Jim. His bullets were coming through the walls. The door wasn't cover. It was a joke."

"Sandburg. What I did yesterday, that wasn't normal."

"Right. For people who aren't sentinels. Jim, sentinels have been recognized in law enforcement and the military for about a hundred years. There has to be lots of precedent for this."

Jim thought that over. "Shooting through things. Around corners. I don't suppose you could find some documentation? Just in case I need it?"

Jim was already looking relieved. Really, Blair wished he'd woken him up to talk. "Half an hour at the library," he promised. "No problem."

"Thanks," Jim said. "That's--thanks."

"You want to come?"

"To the library? Gee. No thanks. Anyway, I need to talk to Rafe about one of my cases. I had a witness coming in from Portland for an interview this afternoon. He'll have to do it now."

***

On his way into the library, Blair ran into Jack Kelso coming out. "Hey," Blair said, surprised. "I didn't know you were back on campus." Jack winced in reply and Blair reconsidered. "You're not, are you? I bet Marcia doesn't know you're out of the house."

"Marcia's working. They're shooting a movie downtown. A couple of the stars warrant special protection."

"And you snuck out."

"I did not sneak out...."

"But you'd appreciate me not mentioning it to her."

"Or to Jim. But that's probably too much to ask."

Blair thought about that. "If there's any sign that you're overdoing it and hurting yourself, I'll rat you out in a heartbeat."

Jack heaved a sigh. "I suppose this is a bad time to ask for a favor, then."

"Uh, no. I mean, any favor but that. What's up?"

Jack motioned to some tables set out in a little patio between the library and the Law School. "If you have a minute?"

Blair went to the nearest empty table and pushed one of the chairs aside so there would be room for Jack's chair. "So what's up?"

Jack sighed. "I assume the barbecue is still on for Monday?" Blair nodded. "I need Joel Taggart to be there. Before you say anything, yes, I realize that by saying that I become the worst kind of manipulative shit."

"You're trying to set up Marcia?" Blair hadn't meant to make that a question.

"Joel is the man who got Jim help. He's kind and he's smart. I can't want more than that for her. She needs good people in her life."

"Yeah," Blair said uncertainly, "I can see that."

Jack's eyes narrowed. "Do you disagree?" he asked with an edge of threat in his voice.

"No. No, Joel really is a good guy. I just, well, maybe this is over the line. But I was wondering how you, ah, felt about it. Her seeing someone."

Jack scowled. "Guilty, mostly. Her life was just starting to come together when I got myself shot and ruined everything."

"Yeah, but," Blair floundered. "I was wondering about you and Marcia."

Jack blanched. He shifted in his chair and focused his eyes over Blair's shoulder.

"I'm sorry. It's none of my business."

"Nonsense. I also need good people in my life. You're a friend. And I started this. You have a right to ask." He sighed. "Marcia isn't my type, Blair. I never saw her that way. I suspect that might be why we worked so well together. But..." He glanced down, watching a finch who had come to investigate some crumbs left on the ground. When he spoke again, his voice was so soft that Blair had to lean forward to hear him. "I worked for the Company for almost twenty years. There are a lot of weaknesses you can't afford when you're--heh--a spy. There are a lot of secrets you have to keep. As a guide, I was already vulnerable. My partners were a weak point. One too many. I couldn't afford...."

"Jack, you've been out for, what? Five years? Six?"

"Lord, longer than that. But so what? Where shall I prowl, Blair? Among my students? Or my research subjects? Don't suggest my colleagues. Those academics who are not predators are neurotics."

"Jack--"

"It took everything I had to un-learn enough crap to be a good guide. To be a good lover?" He laughed. "Someone's partner? A serious relationship? You have no idea. I’d be insane to try it."

Blair swallowed hard. "So you're setting Marcia up."

"I want her to have the chance that I can't." He looked into Blair's eyes. "Don't," he said. "I have friends. That's a luxury I couldn't afford before. Do you really think I'm unhappy?"

Blair had seen Jack in the classroom. He'd heard him talk about his work. The worries he had had nothing to do with his love life and everything to do with his fragile sentinel and changing the world and turning out students who wouldn't kill their partners. "I never noticed you missing anything," he said.

"Can you get Joel to come to the party?"

"He's already coming. But he's a cop. I can't guarantee that he'll be able to be there. Hell, I can't guarantee that a big enough emergency won't come up to make all of us miss it."

"I won't hold you responsible for all the criminal activity in the county," Jack said with a show of generosity. He sat back. "How's Jim?"

"On administrative leave. Discharge of weapon."

Jack winced. "Do you expect a problem?"

"The suspect was shooting first. Damn, I don't even know his name. How's that for cold? Anyway, Jim was returning fire, so there shouldn't be a problem. Say, you ever hear of a sentinel shooting someone he couldn't actually see?"

"Quantico has a six week course in it. So does Paris Island. Hmmm. And Fort Knox. Only about fifty percent pass, though. Tracking someone by hearing while guns are being fired shuts down a lot of sentinels. Are you saying Jim--?"

"Yeah. It weirded him out a little, when he thought about it. So it's normal?"

"It's exceptional. But it's not pathological or improper. You're thinking of the review board?"

"He's afraid it won't look good."

Jack sighed. "In the Army, doing that in combat has its own medal. I can email you the reference."

"Wow. Thanks. That would pretty much do all my work for the whole day."

Jack laughed. "Good. You can give me a ride home. I came in by taxi."

"And if Marcia should realize you went out, you can always say you were with me."

"You see right through my nefarious plan."

After dropping Jack off, Blair ducked into the mall to get a new tie and stopped by the grocery store. Bread, skim milk, oatmeal, cheese (strong, pungent goat cheese because Jim liked it, go figure), pasta. When he got home, it was late afternoon. Jim was back. He was parked in front of the TV, watching what appeared to be a Katharine Hepburn movie on video. "Any more downstairs?" Jim asked, nodding to the bags Blair carried.

"Nope. All set." He set the milk and cheese in the fridge. "What are you watching?"

"'Desk Set.' Jack recommended it."

"Jack recommended it? A 1950's chick flick?" Blair asked doubtfully. "Jack Kelso?"

"Well, he said it was the first movie to treat a sentinel like a human being. I'm not sure I see it."

Huh. "Oh. Well, it was the first time a sentinel in the movies had a sense of humor. Until Bunny Sumner, sentinels in popular culture were sort of super heroes or tragic figures. They were all pretty grim and two-dimensional."

"Bunny Watson," Jim corrected.

"No, she married Sumner."

Jim hit pause. "So--what? It's a true story? She was real?"

"Sort of a true story. Bunny Sumner was actually a pretty prominent activist. She resisted the mandatory requirement that sentinels work with guides. Well, she never needed one."

"She was working in an office," Jim said. "I wouldn't need a guide, if I worked in an office. Who cares if you zone off back in the stacks."

Blair shrugged. "She didn't get her way."

Jim ended the pause. On the screen, Katharine Hepburn was plowing through an eighty stanza poem: "She has reached the topmost ladder. O'er her hangs the great dark bell, awful is the gloom beneath her like the pathway down to hell."

"Any chance I can--?" Jim asked.

"Your memory is very good," Blair said, "But it's sensory, not textual. I don't see you ever reciting long strings of numbers, either."

"Can Monk?"

"His memory is more textual than yours. But I don't think he could do that."

"’Shall she let it ring? No, never! Flash her eyes with sudden light, as she springs and grasps it firmly, curfew shall not ring tonight.' They hung up... And I know another one! 'Out she swung--'"

"So what is normal for a sentinel?" Jim asked.

"Variation," Blair said immediately. "Oh, I ran into Jack. He says targeting things you can't see is something most sentinels have to be trained for, but it's not something with no precedent."

"So it's normal?" Jim asked, just as Blair had earlier.

"I guess," he answered, thinking, trying to snag the thought that was sliding through his mind. This might be a good sign. Sort of. Jim, instead of resisting being a sentinel, was solidly working toward being a 'normal' sentinel. Blair had seen hints of this before. It was a step in the right direction. The problem was, "Jim, sentinels aren't all alike. They're just not. We can describe different skills and capacities and compare performance in certain areas, but how, well, how anybody's brain works is pretty much still a mystery. Whatever you are, that's normal for you. Nobody else's standards matter."

"Right," Jim said, his voice thickened by raw disbelief.

"Okay, try this. Normal isn't the right question. Healthy is the right question. Huh. Effective is an okay question, too. Strong."

Jim stopped the movie. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"Well. I'm sure there are lots of things I haven't told you--Oh. You think... you think I'm being easy on you."

"Blair, 'special' is what they call people who are damaged. And, okay, yeah, I know I'm damaged. But I'm trying to find out how much, and I'd appreciate a little help."

Blair folded his arms, holding himself still. He was pretty sure his scent was spiking with all kinds of anger and impatience that Jim could smell. He was afraid to speak, since his voice would almost certainly give him away.

Jim, watching him, said, "Chief, I know you really want me to be okay. But if I'm not, we need to face this. Your feelings--"

Blair exploded. Spectacularly. "Being okay has nothing to do with being normal! Your dad was an ass, all right? He was wrong. You are not defective. There is nothing wrong with you. Ask Jack, all right? If you don't believe me, ask Jack."

Jim was staring at him with rounded eyes. He looked horrified rather than frightened, so while Blair was probably not guilty of maltreatment at this moment he might have convinced Jim he was crazy.

Even knowing that the best thing he could do was shut up now, Blair continued. "You are not Bunny Sumner. Or Adrian. Or Ben. Or Rodney. You're Jim. I don't know what you're capable of yet. I don't know what you need or how you'll be five years from now or--damn it. You want me to tell you how to be. I can't. There isn't any normal. I'm sorry, it's harder than that."

"Chief--?"

"Haven't we been over this? Why can't you hear this? There is nothing wrong with you. There never was. You were never the problem."

He didn't see Jim move. He only felt the arms around him. "All right. All right."

"I'm not in denial, damn it. You're fine. You're fine. You're better than fine, you're wonderful."

"Okay, okay. I give up. You win. I'm wrong. I'm wrong."

Blair groaned, burying his face in Jim's arm. "You're fine," he whispered. "You're wonderful."

There was a long silence. Then Jim whispered, "You accept me. I get it. I get it. All right?"

It wasn't all right. Jim didn't get it. This wasn't about Blair accepting Jim. It was about Jim accepting Jim. And, okay, Jim was a lot closer to seeing that than he'd been last October, when he'd been assuming that a) he was some kind of freak of nature, and, b) he was unviable and dying besides. Oh, damn it, Blair thought. It's not easy. It doesn't get to be easy.

Jim was shaking. He was holding on very tightly, pinning Blair against him. He tried to be comforted by that: Jim had learned to bodily connect with his guide. He'd learned to take comfort. He found Blair safe. They'd come so far. Jim was healthy now. He was engaging with his friends. It was good. It was all good. No, he wasn't comfortable with himself yet, but long before Jim had learned to reject himself, his senses--his reality--had been rejected by his family in the harshest terms possible. Jim's father, surely knowing the risks faced by untrained sentinels, had refused to admit the possibility that his son was a freak until, finally, Jim had suppressed the reality his father was denying. As it was, Jim had been maimed by that repression. Possibly, though, he had gotten off lightly. Living with the senses and no training, denying his experience, ignoring the warnings his nose and skin gave him, he might not have survived at all.

Jim had survived William Ellison. He had survived the Army and more than a year abandoned among strangers. He'd survived Lee Brackett. He'd survived Lee despising him and ignoring him and punishing him for 'weakness' and 'insubordination' and 'wasting' Brackett's time. He'd survive this last thing, too. He would. He just needed time. And relentless pushing. And Blair's utter, unwavering certainty that Jim was wonderful.

"You smell okay," Jim said suddenly. "Can I trust that?"

Blair swallowed. "Yeah." Jim let him pull away. "Yeah, trust smell. I'm okay. You deserve better than the crap you've been given, but I can't just reach out and take it way. I can't just make it better."

Jim glanced away. "You fixed everything else."

Blair laughed. "No, that was you." He patted Jim's shoulder. "So? Want to go out to eat? Since we have all this time on our hands? Or see a movie?"

Jim didn't want to go out. It turned out he'd rented a bag full of sentinel movies. He had Smilla's Sense of Snow (sentinel amateur detective), The Sound of Bones (sentinel zombies from hell), King Solomon's Mines (the 1954 version, sentinel in Africa), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (teenage sentinel hunting vampires). Blair made popcorn (not the microwave kind, the real stuff) and watched with him. When they rewound the last one and put it in its box, Blair asked if Jim had any questions or anything. Jim shrugged and grunted and ordered pizza.

Jim's meeting with Internal Affairs was set for the next day at 11:15. He wore a tie and showed up on time. Blair, in contact with Kowalski, knew that Vecchio wouldn't be cleared for duty till Monday morning, but Kowalski and Fraser had been left on the case. They'd attended the autopsies of both Jake Marshall (killed by the bear) and Mickey Wen (killed Wednesday night at the cabin) and had looked over the evidence. Because Vecchio was still out in the cold, they couldn't meet at the precinct, so they'd made plans to join up at the hotel the feds were using.

So Jim was prompt and well groomed and Blair had traded flannel for a sweater and put his hair in a tidy pony-tail. Blair was not required at the meeting. Probably, IA would have preferred not to involve him. Testimony and reports were optional for guides--they were trained observers, but it was assumed the only thing they were paying close attention to was the sentinel so they weren't necessarily 'reliable.' Besides, it wasn't the job they were being paid to do.

But while Blair's participation wouldn't be compelled, a sentinel in a hazardous profession couldn't be ordered to leave his guide behind for any reason. He wasn't required to be supervised every moment. In the field, yes, the rule was no working without a guide, but in the office, going to meetings, going to lunch, they had discretion. That was, Jim and Blair had discretion. The decision wasn't in the hands of Jim's superiors. They couldn't send Blair away.

Personally, of course, Blair was very interested in the outcome and he wanted to provide moral support. He had the data Jack sent, not that he thought it was necessary. Probably, Jim didn't need him at all. Tactically, Blair was mainly there as a symbol. A guide, to remind them that Jim was a sentinel--a sentinel in the field as a detective, not in a laboratory or restricted to tracking--and too valuable to jerk around just for the fun of it.

In fact, it was actually kind of anticlimactic. The suspect had had a long record of minor violence, including occasionally shooting at (but not hitting) people. His next arrest would have been the "third strike." As it was, he'd opened fire not only on a cop, but on some visiting feds.

Blair, relieved that it was over so quickly and neatly, didn't think too hard about the phrase, 'righteous shoot' and hoped to god that nobody ever said it in front of his mother.

***

Jim collected his gun and went straight to evidence to take a look at the stuff that had been brought in from Polk's cabin. There was a lot. A lot-a lot. Thirty one boxes of a lot.

Half of those boxes were checked out by the lab. Caroline's people couldn't log the pelts and horns and appalling dried internal organs properly until the species were identified. Kowalski and Fraser were there now, helping out since only one of Caroline's people had experience with animal remains, and none of that experience was with (for example) otter pelts.

Jim looked at the remaining boxes of dead animal parts and decided not to try it alone. Forensics would be crowded this time of day, and he wasn't in a crowd mood, but he wasn't equipped to make any sense of a poacher's stash. He'd have to see how the others were doing. He turned Sandburg around and headed down one flight of stairs to the lab. The door to Monk's office (closet) was shut, although Jim could hear him in there. Everyone else on duty had wandered away from their stations (even Serena, who primarily dealt with information technology) to crowd around Fraser, who was lecturing on the difference between black bears and brown bears. Apparently, they were all brown, for a start.

The bear pelt in question was taking up an entire table. Fraser, immaculate and poised, was now explaining how the skin had been improperly cured. Jim, ignored by the enthralled lecturees, went to a heap of antlers spread out across another table.

"What do you think?" Sandburg whispered in his ear.

Jim tried to form a coherent answer. "I think there are three or four different kinds of animal here." Barehanded and not even really caring, Jim stroked one finger along the surface of a horn. "It all looks pretty clean, but I smell blood."

A hand, at once, on his back. "Is it human blood?" Sandburg asked.

Jim shook his head, an uneven twitch. "Animal." He swallowed hard. He began to sort the antlers and horns by type. He'd be only guessing as to what animal any of them came from, but the different kinds looked nothing like each other. Nothing.

There was something a little obscene about the mounds of booty. Jim had ghostly memories of hunting; of small animals and making poison for the tips of the darts and the taste of roasted meat. This stuff just didn't make any sense.

Kowalski came over and hopped onto the next table beside a pile of bear paws. "Wow," he muttered by way of greeting. "Looks like somebody took out Bambi and all of Bambi's friends and family."

Jim sneezed. Three times. Hard.

Sandburg passed him a tissue. "How much is all this worth?" Sandburg asked.

"Right now, Fraze is guessing about two hundred thousand dollars. And these guys, they weren't even the big fish."

"Have we got any evidence that might lead us to bigger fish?" Jim asked, looking at the array of fur and dried innards.

"We think the big fish is Ho Ng. But so far, we've got nothing to tie him in. Oh, we do have this." He fished out a scrap of paper and passed it to Jim. "Your people pulled a phone number off his cell phone. A Chinese herb shop called Tong Fong Lo."

Blair frowned. "So the guy was into alternative medicine?"

Kowalski grinned. "Polk called the same number, about twice a week."

Jim blew his nose again, realized that he had practically shredded the tissue, and shoved it in his pocked. "Looks like we have a lead."

Kowalski grinned. "I'm thinking we go in, bust a few heads, shake things up."

Fraser, coming up behind him, said, "You only say that to bother me."

Jim looked thoughtfully at the number in his hand. "We need to figure out how to make contact. Tell me something. If I was a contraband dealer, what would be the most expensive and rarest item I could sell?"

"Ounce for ounce?" Fraser asked. "Narwhal tusk."

Jim blinked. "A nar what?"

"Narwhal," Sandburg said. "It's an arctic whale. The tusks can grow to eight feet long."

Frazer bestowed an approving look on Sandburg. Jim didn't dwell on the idea of a whale with tusks. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number on the slip of paper.

"You're kidding," Kowalski said.

Fraser shook his head. "It is more valuable than gold."

"It has certain properties," Blair said, trying to sound delicate. "I'll tell you about it later."

The line picked up. "Tong Fong Lo."

"Yeah," Jim said. "Tell your boss if he wants a steady supply of narwhal tusks to dial 555-4563."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Your boss will." Jim snapped the phone shut. "Now we wait."

"What makes you think we can get any," Kowalski said.

Jim glanced at Fraser, who was looking serious and attentive. "What?" he said. "You can't?"

Fraser nodded once. "We can," he said.

They made arrangements to meet later, off public property so that the other Ray could join them. Jim didn't have time to continue the discussion now; the appointment with the VIP from Las Vegas would probably eat up most of the afternoon.

On the way to the bullpen to pick up the copy of the file Jim kept at his desk, Sandburg said, "You know, Jim. You don't have to talk to them if you don't want to."

Jim shrugged. "No big," he said. It didn't sound very convincing, so he added, "Brackett was in Vegas. I want to hear what these people have to say."

Jim knew a couple of sentinels in law enforcement. Ben Fraser. Fox or something with the FBI. His own cousin was in the Coast Guard. He'd only ever met one forensic sentinel, though. While they couldn't all be Adrian Monk--it was hard to believe that many people came close--he sort of expected that sentinels who went into forensics were too fragile and unstable and, well, twitchy to make it in actual law enforcement or search and rescue.

The reality surprised him. The man who appeared--exactly on time--in the main lobby was wearing khakis and a short-sleeved shirt; he didn't dress with Adrian's tense precision. When he greeted them he had a confidence that was nothing like Adrian either. He was tall. He made good eye contact. While Jim was pretty sure he could take him in a fight, he wasn't at all what Jim had expected. "Dr. Grissom," he said, reaching to shake hands before he remembered that some sentinels didn't (and really, after seeing Adrian Monk meet people even once, how could he forget?), and Jim was supposed to show that he knew that and was polite. "I'm Jim Ellison."

Grissom took Jim's hand and didn't give any sign that he even noticed the slip. "My guide, Sara Sidle." He nodded to the woman with him. She smelled like a guide. Her shampoo was unscented, her deodorant mineral based, she wore no make-up.

Sandburg didn't wait for an introduction. He leaned around Jim and said, "Hi, I'm Blair. I've read your work."

Leave it to Sandburg to say something charming right off the bat. Grissom responded with a short, ironic smile. "Not insects, I assume."

Irritated, Jim said shortly, "Blair is a student of Jack Kelso."

It took a moment for the name to register. "That's right. We're in Rainier's backyard. Dr. Kelso's work has opened up a very interesting dialogue." Neutral and polite, even when ambushed. Jim had to concede the point to the visiting team.

Sandburg rolled his eyes. "Thanks a lot, Jim. Could you at least let me ask a couple of questions before outing me as the antichrist?"

Jim tried to tell himself that this wasn't about a shocking lack of loyalty on Sandburg's part. Blair loved Jack, but he would sell his soul to find out about sentinels in groups. For Jim. Sandburg kept wondering--hoping?--if sentinel community had something to offer, something Jim could use to compensate or recover from all damage his isolation and ignorance had done.

The visiting guide, Sidle, pushed a paper bag into the center of the awkward moment. "Have you had lunch yet? We brought sandwiches. We know what it's like, trying to get a minute to eat in this business."

Jim led them to the first floor conference room. It was carpeted, with paneled walls. Since it was small, it was mainly used for press interviews and meetings with community complaint delegations. It didn't get a lot of use.

There were a dozen sandwiches in the bag, including some with (what a nasty idea) wheat-free bread. It was a casual preparation for any unknown sentinel dietary restrictions.

Grissom looked Sandburg over curiously. "What was it you wanted to ask?"

"You have half a dozen sentinels working together. How does that change things? For them, I mean. Normally, sentinels together--it's kids at camp for a few weeks in the summer or patients in a special hospital. How is it different when it's just life?"

Grissom opened his mouth and shut it again. "I have no idea?"

Jim selected a ham on rye and a bottle of water. "How can your department even afford that many sentinels?"

"We don't recruit sentinels. We don't use pay incentives. The guides are all trained CSIs." Grissom shrugged. "It doesn't cost us anything special."

Sandburg sat up alertly. "Then how do you get so many?"

"We have the second best crime lab in the country." As though that explained everything. Maybe to forensic sentinels, it did.

"So? What's it like?"

The frown was puzzled, as though Sandburg was making no sense.

Sandburg showed no trace of impatience. He prompted, "In the army, they keep sentinels apart as much as possible, because they tend to get competitive and antagonistic."

"Ah. I see. No, my people are all professionals. As far as deportment goes, the standards are the same for sentinels and guides as for everyone else."

Jim could practically see Sandburg's ears perk up. "You wrote that excessive emotionalism is a distraction. Were you referring to," he wiggled his fingers, "to it causing conflict within a group? Do crowds of sentinels have a problem with possessiveness?"

"Possessiveness? Possessive of what?" He looked a little horrified. "Of guides?"

Sidle, who had been very quiet, muttered, "Yeah, but try sitting in Katherine's chair," around a bite of sandwich.

"I agree that it's important to encourage the development of working relationships. But any sentinel in my department has to be able to work with any of the guides in a pinch. Some of them normally shift among multiple sentinels."

Frankly disbelieving, Jim tried to remember what Blair had told him about this man's theories. "So it doesn't matter who your guide is?"

With a grave patience that set Jim's teeth on edge, Grissom said, "Competence matters. Most well-trained sentinels can work with any competent and attentive guide."

Jim looked them over. He glanced at Sandburg, who was thinking hard. So Jim said, "Easy to say when the guide sitting next to you smells like she completely adores you."

Suddenly, everybody smelled like acute embarrassment. The guide in question was the first to recover. "To be fair, we don't usually work together," she said. "Would you hand me a napkin?"

Grissom shot her a grateful look. "Sara is the best guide we have. I don't usually waste her on me."

"And this works?" Blair asked, trying to salvage some information.

"Some people are more flexible than others. But nobody complains if they can't have their first choice all the time. We do what's necessary." Jim heard no lies in Grissom's voice, although it was possible that he was just insane.

"You didn't come here for sentinel theory," Jim said, wishing the meeting was over already.

Grissom sighed. "No, we didn't." He pulled a file from a battered leather briefcase. "You've seen a copy of our report?" He pulled a hand drawing of Lee Brackett from the file and passed it across the table.

Jim found himself looking away, but Blair said, "Yeah, that's him. But you already knew that."

"What we're looking for," Grissom said, "Is any insight you might have into what he was doing in Vegas, how dangerous he actually is, and if you think he'll be back."

Jim shook his head. "No connections in Nevada that I ever knew about, but we weren't close. Your case report said he attacked a working girl. Was there any hint, anything at all, about what he might have been doing in town in the first place?"

Something passed through their two guests. It wasn't quite anger. Or embarrassment. Grissom's jaw shifted slightly. Sidle laid a quelling hand on his arm. The air sang of 'threat,' although Jim couldn't have explained or described what that meant.

"Sex therapist," Sidle corrected carefully. "And no. He made an appointment. He paid in cash. I think the question--"

Jim glanced at the report. "'Lady Heather's Dominion'?" he drawled doubtfully.

"She's a sentinel. Since she's self employed, she isn't required to work with a guide. So what we need to know is, is Lee Brackett so obsessed with hurting sentinels that he went all the way to Las Vegas in order to get a shot at one?" Grissom spoke calmly, his eyes giving nothing away.

Jim sighed, laid his own file on the table. "You've seen the psych report?"

"Most guides I know could fake a psych exam," Grissom said. Blair nodded.

Jim glanced at the closed file, didn't open it. "In my opinion--" Jim stopped and glanced away. "This is my opinion, and it's not an educated opinion. I don't have a lot of experience with guides. But I don't think he's insane. I don't think he's obsessed with sentinels. I'm not even sure he hates me." Jim glanced at Sandburg. "He wasn't incompetent. Well, obviously, he was incompetent. But he wasn't ignorant. And his goal wasn't to hurt me--No, Blair, listen. He... he liked hurting me. He didn't care what happened to me. But what he wanted was control. And he wanted me convenient. And he was contemptuous--" God, this was hard. Jim stopped to breath, made himself give the report. "But mostly, he didn't care. As long as it didn't impinge on him, he didn't care."

"He was a bad guide...." Blair whispered.

"No. He wasn't." Jim glanced dismissively at the closed folder. "He's not an idiot. The psych report was wrong; he's not out of control. He's just a sociopath. He was a competent guide. He knew exactly what he was doing. He didn't care, not about me. He did care about his career, and being comfortable. And having people... being superior to people. Having power."

"So--why attack Heather Kessler?" Sidle asked, mercifully breaking the raw silence that followed.

"Not to get his jollies off," Jim said. "Not just for that. And not because it was a stupid mistake. He must have wanted something he could use. Could she have known something he needed? Could he need a sentinel for something? Was she special, somehow?"

"Guide training," Grissom said. "She has the degree."

"She was easy to find," Sidle said. "She advertises that she's a sentinel. Charges more for it. He could get her alone."

They looked at each other. "If she knew anything else, she would have told us," Sidle said.

"Her memory is perfect. If Brackett had let anything slip, we'd already have it."

Sidle turned to look at Jim. "We've been watching. No assaults on sentinels. No disappearances. It's been over a week. Whatever he was looking for, I don't think he found it in Las Vegas."

Under the table, Sandburg slid his hand into Jim's.

Jim said, "He lost all the career he had, and all his legitimacy. We think--we suspect--that he might be looking for work as an assassin specializing in sentinels. Something that makes use of his skills and experience." His mouth was very dry. There didn't seem to be quite enough air in the room. "He may have been looking to make a demonstration." Jim swallowed. "Or if he's already found a client, well, does your sex therapist have any enemies? She may even have been his first target."

Everyone smelled like ignorance and worry.

"I'd almost rather he was just 'crazy,'" Grissom whispered.

"His self control is excellent. We won't find him through his excesses. We've looked at his history, his contacts. Nothing. Brackett's good with disguises. He has espionage training. And he has help, which we haven't yet identified."

Brackett's ugliness seemed to be right there in the room with them. No one said anything for a long time.

Sidle reached across the table and brushed Sandburg's arm. "It's him." She inclined her head at her partner.

"Sara--?"

"What?" Blair asked.

"You wanted to know about sentinels in groups. How we do it. What sentinels can get from each other."

"Yeah," Blair breathed. His hand was still wrapped around Jim's.

"It's him."

"Because he's also a guide?"

"No. Because he's compassionate. He's not open. And he's not fun. But he knows what's important to everybody. He puts himself in everybody's place."

Blair shook his head, confused.

"For sentinels the world gets narrow," she said softly. "They tend to lose track of things, either in the sensory load or their own pain. The world gets away from them."

"It's isolating," Blair answered.

"He doesn't let them forget about the world outside themselves. He gives them a model of how to live with it. That's why we can float guides. All the guides are real people to the sentinels. Nobody gets isolated in a single pairing."

"Sara, that's not--I'm a lousy administrator. I don't--I don't do anything special."

She swung his chair so he was facing her. "Everybody's real to you. And everybody's the same. The homeless, the suspects, whales, the mayor, the guides, the techs, the cops on the street. Everybody is real to you, and you make them real to us."

"I ask everybody to be professional. That's all I ask."

She turned to Blair. "How many sentinels work here? Is it just the two of you?"

"One other. In the lab." Jim thought of Adrian, hiding from the dead animal parts scattered everywhere but the electronics lab.

She heard Jim's answer, but didn't take her eyes off Blair. "Here you are, surrounded by a bunch of macho cops who think he's some kind of freak who makes evidence appear out of thin air."

"Not everyone," Sandburg said quickly.

"But enough." She glanced at Jim. "I'm betting it was bad," she said.

Jim wasn't sure what she meant, but Sandburg nodded. Then Jim smelled a faint trace of pain and knew Blair was thinking--again--about how sick Jim had been by the time Brackett had left.

Without looking away from Blair, she pointed at her partner. "He's wrong. So is your Dr. Kelso. It's not about the guide. It's not about competence or attachment."

"Believe me," Blair said, leaning across to meet her. "Sometimes it's about the guide."

"Okay, yeah. You get something criminal once in a while. But day to day--it's almost never about the guide. One person isn't the answer. Or the whole problem. It's the isolation that kills them. The loneliness and the fear and not having enough hands to help."

Blair's eyes were on fire. "They keep telling me sentinels have nothing to offer each other. That it's not natural. That sentinels want guides--"

She shook her head. "That's wrong."

For a long moment they were frozen, then Sandburg slumped back to sag in the chair.

Sidle began to gather up the lunch mess, separating the sandwiches from the other detritus. "Well?" she asked Grissom. He shook his head.

She glanced at Jim. "Is there anything else--? We're sorry to have kept you so long. We're actually due in Seattle in about three hours, and we'd like to check in to the hotel first."

"No, thank you. We'll keep you up to date on the case."

"We'd appreciate that," Grissom said. "I don't suppose you could find use for these other sandwiches?"

"Thanks. They'll be very popular upstairs."

They walked their guests out to the front, and then it was over. Jim felt kind of drained, and in the elevator, he glanced over at Sandburg and tested the waters with, "Well, that was intense." He'd only meant to say 'interesting,' but the truth had slipped out.

"It's the Brackett thing," Sandburg sighed.

"Now wait. That wasn't all me," Jim said.

Sandburg winced. "Okay? You know how Jack and I and Sharona get a little strange when the topic comes up?"

"I had sort of noticed."

"Everybody does. The guide faculty at Rainier. Andy--you know, with Rucker. John Sheppard. The Brackett thing makes everybody twitchy."

"Oh," Jim said.

"It's like parents and child abuse. But a lot worse, because nobody gets years and years of training and has a psych test before they can be parents."

"It's not like there's no guide malpractice," Jim answered, trying to keep the growl out of his voice.

"No, it's not. But Brackett is so far past everything we believe about ourselves. It's just..." he trailed off. Before he added anything else, the elevator doors opened.

They dropped the remaining sandwiches off in the break room. There was stuff to do. Nothing urgent; everything time sensitive had been farmed out to other detectives. Two homicides waiting for lab results. A series of burglaries that was completely stalled. Inquiries on a high profile missing persons case out of Ohio that looked like it might have a local connection. And paperwork, of course, always paperwork.

Sandburg, for once, didn't offer a hand with the typing. He was researching poaching and endangered animals. Jim had to wonder if this was normal. He was pretty sure that Sharona, upstairs, didn't spend a lot of time doing background work or looking for new avenues of investigation. Not that she was disinterested or apathetic or anything. She worked long hours and climbed in and out of dumpsters like a trooper. But she didn't take a lot of initiative when it came to cases. He wondered if the guides Marcia worked with when she did security work also carried guns and little radios. He couldn't use Fraser and Vecchio as a model; Vecchio was just some cop who'd been drafted as an amateur guide. Maybe Jim should have asked about that when he'd had an expert on sentinels in law enforcement sitting across the table eating lunch with him.

They walked out of the PD at 5:00. Jim would almost have liked to head home, but they had an appointment with the Mountie and his entourage. No dinner in front of the TV, no quiet run in the park afterward.

***

The details of the traffic in endangered animal products were the stuff of nightmares. Really. Too many days of this and Blair would find himself a vegetarian. Hunting for sport? Completely incomprehensible. Hunting illegally for sport? Pissed him off. But that was small potatoes in the files Blair was reading now. Rhino horn? Four or five thousand dollars a pop. Not an issue here in Washington, but it turned out that a single bowl of bear paw soup would cost hundreds of dollars in parts of Asia. But the bear's gall bladder--gram for gram--had a street value twenty times that of cocaine. Then there were the bear bladders.

Bought by sick people, desperate people trying to get better. Blair was right there when it came to toting up the shortcomings of Western medicine, but damn!

"You okay, Chief?" Jim asked without looking up from his computer.

"Fine. Just thinking what Naomi will say when I tell her about this case."

"Hmmmm. For or against the brutal killing of cute and defenseless animals? I'm thinking against."

Blair managed a laugh. "You might be right there, Jim. Sometimes they just hack off the parts they want while the animal is still alive...."

"Yuck," Jim said. "Thanks."

Jim seemed okay. Probably was okay. Of course, after the meeting with Dr. Grissom, Blair was rethinking his idea of "okay." There had been a confidence about Dr. Grissom that Jim just didn't have. That none of the sentinels Blair saw every day had. Mike at the department, he seemed to have a whole 'regular guy' thing going that worked for him. By local standards, Mike was doing very well. Adrian was terrified of everything and, despite being right most of the time, the least certain person Blair had ever met. Marcia mainly bounced between angry and exhausted. Whatever strength she might have had, had been worn down by very ugly work and ignored illness. Rodney McKay, although possibly the most arrogant person Blair had ever met, somehow managed to have very little confidence at all.

Compared to that crowd, Blair had thought that Jim was doing very well. Even in the worst days working with Brackett, Jim had managed to function as a cop. When he wasn't in the hospital, he was doing competent work for Major Crimes. Aggression. Intelligence. Courage. Jim had kept all of that. Blair had watched him under cover, in car chases, tracking in an urban center, testifying. Jim was good. He was unbowed by authority and unhesitating in the face of danger. But. But mostly he was covering anxiety and weariness and confusion.

The certainty, the confidence that Blair had seen in Grissom's eyes, Blair had seen that in the FBI agent from Washington DC, and in Duncan Macleod. Sometimes in Ben Fraser. There was a way to be a sentinel and be strong and confident. Having enhanced senses didn't necessarily mean being uncomfortable in your skin. But Jim wasn't there yet. Not yet.

Blair closed the file on armadillo purses and logged out of the computer. Grissom and his guide had stayed very close together. She'd hovered. Lately, Blair had been paying very close attention to other sentinels and their partners. If he had had to guess, he'd say that Grissom was having trouble with his senses or his health. Even so, he'd been confident. Surprised by Blair's questions, unsettled by the idea of Lee Brackett, he'd still been centered and secure.

Confidence. Certainty. Not just control over their senses but not fighting their bodies. Blair had seen it too many times for it to be a freak accident. What Blair didn't know was how to get Jim there.

"Come on," Jim said suddenly. "Time to go. Wouldn't want to keep those wild and crazy Canadians waiting."

Ben and the Rays had a set of connecting rooms in one of the big hotels downtown. Ben opened the door, but Ray Vecchio pounced on them at once. "You like pizza, don't you? I don't want Chinese again."

Jim, looking very unwilling to be drawn into an argument, said, "Either is fine."

Ben looked at his partner narrowly. "Pizza is fine. I'm sure delivery--"

"Can't just pick some random delivery place. Yuck." Ray Vecchio seized Blair by the sleeve. "We're going to find some decent pizza. Be back in no time. You go ahead and get started."

In the blink of an eye, Blair was being hustled down the hall toward the elevator. Huh. Vecchio stabbed the down button four times and bounced on his toes.

"You know," Blair said experimentally, "The PD gets delivery from Watkins Pizzeria. I think we're in their area."

"Watkins?" Vecchio repeated. "You buy your pizza from a guy named 'Watkins'? I think I've heard everything now. What? Do they serve it with little cups of ranch dressing you can dip the crust in?"

"No, it's good pizza. His mother's from Chicago--"

The elevator dinged and Vecchio nudged Blair forward even before the doors had finished opening. "You know what? Never mind. Whatever. Watkins' pizza is just fine."

"So, I'm guessing you've been stuck at the hotel for the past two days?" Blair hazarded, going for light and friendly. "Bored much?"

"What? No? Why?"

"Oh, well then. Watkins delivers--"

Vecchio caught Blair's hand as he reached to halt the elevator on the next floor. "Yeah. Thanks, kid. Great. I need some advice."

"Oh," Blair said, surprised. "What about? Sentinels?"

"No, women. Of course, sentinels! Women are a piece of cake compared to sentinels."

"Oh, okay. Sure." Vecchio charged out of the elevator, and Blair scampered after. "Um, you realize, I've been doing this for--it's not even a year. Half a year. I'm not the best--"

Vecchio turned, pausing long enough to say, "I know three guides with actual training. The other two won't talk to me. You're it."

"Okay, right, wait a minute." Blair took out his cell phone. Watkins Pizza wasn't on speed dial, but Blair called from the station about once a week and knew it by heart. He ordered one vegetarian deluxe, one 'lottsa meat,' and one onion and pepperoni. He had it delivered to the hotel bar. "Let's talk."

Blair ordered a beer. Vecchio ordered a diet coke. "Benny's got a hell of a nose," he explained.

"Should I--?"

"Nah. He's too polite to ask you any awkward questions."

Blair wondered if he should say something. Instead, he just waited while the bartender passed their drinks over.

Vecchio folded his hands and looked down, his eyes on the condensation collecting in the tiny napkin under his drink. "Benny's hit a rough patch," he said. "And I don't know how bad it is."

"What's happening?"

"He's stopped talking to himself." Blair thought about that. He must have been too slow, because Vecchio took an angry gulp of his soda and said, "He's stopped talking to people who aren't there. He's stopped seeing invisible animals."

Blair gasped, "Oh, my god. You're kidding."

"See?" Vecchio nodded. "That right there is the other reason I can't talk to anybody else about this. Nobody else would see this is a problem."

Blair leaned closer. "What happened?"

"I don't know. If I knew, would I be asking for help?"

"You know something."

Vecchio deflated a little. "That's the thing. I can't. I'm not sure. It's been really hard, these last few months. Benny's had a bad time."

"The kidnapping messed him up?" In December, Jim and Fraser had both been part of a group of sentinels kidnapped for sale overseas. They hadn't been held gently, and Fraser had been a captive for a couple of weeks.

"No, no, he was okay after that. Better, anyway."

Blair nodded seriously.

"We went back to Chicago after that. For Christmas. I have family there, and Kowalski keeps an apartment. It's home base."

"Okay?" More nodding.

Vecchio took a deep breath. "So, we were out shopping. In a mall. Fraser sees some guy commit a misdemeanor. Only it turns out the guy is connected. Big time. Fraser decides to use this misdemeanor as, as, as a wedge? You know? A lever to take this guy down."

"Okay. Um, how?"

Vecchio shook his head. "We couldn't see it either. We had no idea what he was doing. Not me, not the Bag Lady, not the guys down at the PD--"

"Bag Lady?"

"Oh. Kowalski. Anyway, we fucked up. We all fucked up. Left Benny hanging with his ass uncovered and he got the shit beat out of him. You know?"

"How badly was he hurt?"

"Stitches. Bruised ribs. Bruised everything, he pissed blood for three days. But it wasn't the fight that got him down. It was the fact that we had no clue what he was doing at all. It was like we didn't know him. See, Benny, he saw through Warfield. He knew how to break him. He knew exactly what he was doing, but we didn’t see where he was going, and we didn't back him up."

"Wow," Blair said, "I guess that was really bad." Because what could you say when a guide messed everything up that badly?

"Benny never got mad about it. He couldn't figure out why we couldn't see what was going on. He didn't think he was being subtle about the plan. But he never... he's very forgiving, you know?"

"Yeah." Ouch.

"He's a good guy. The best. Never complained. Never got mad. Went right back to work."

"But you think he was mad?"

He shook his head. "I think he was depressed." He signaled for another soda. "But that's not all of it. Last month we had a big case. Huge. The kind that makes careers, you know? If we hadn't had three of those already?"

Blair nodded, waiting.

"There was nerve gas. This stolen Russian sub that turned up in the Yukon."

"You're kidding? That was you?" It had been all over the news.

He sighed. "That was us. There were a lot of Mounties. Some terrorists. An arms dealer that had been doing nasty stuff in Canada and the US of A for the last twenty-five years."

"Wow."

"He'd gotten away from Fraser's father. The arms dealer. Years and years ago. He killed Fraser's mother and then got away from his father. He was a Mountie, too, Fraser's father." He was talking fairly fast, his voice hard. This wasn't an easy conversation for him.

"Damn."

"Fraser brought the arms dealer in and turned him over, pretty as you please. And then he stopped talking to people who weren't there."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I don't know what happened, but it messed him up."

"Have you tried talking to him?"

"He says he's fine. He's not fine, Blair. He doesn't sleep. He doesn't tell Inuit stories. He eats. He goes to work. He takes the wolf out, he's conscientious and everything, but he's not happy."

Blair thought of Ben, tried to compare the man he'd seen these past few days to the man he'd met in December.

"I know you know the animals are important."

Blair could only nod.

"But I can't go to the doctor or whatever and say, 'we've got a problem, my partner has stopped seeing the dead,' you know what I mean?" Vecchio leaned forward, spoke more softly. "I'll be honest with you. It happened to me a couple times. My father, he's been dead eight years. Except every once in a while he shows up and is not helpful at all. I can't imagine coping with something like that all the time."

"No," Blair agreed, wondering if everybody else got to see the dead and talk to spirit animals but him.

"But Benny--he seems to need it."

Blair nodded. "It's a good thing, I think. Seeing animals."

"So, um, do you...?"

"Just that once," Blair said, feeling ignorant and left out.

"So?" Vecchio asked, eyes burning.

Right, Blair thought bitterly. He thinks I'm an expert. "Does he have any friends who are sentinels? Have you talked to any of his former guides?"

"No. Well, yes." Vecchio sighed. "Buck Frobrisher. Not that he's ever what you call 'help.'" He paused. Blair, who was working up to an advanced state of horrified and astonished, didn't try to say anything. "He's a sentinel, used to work with Benny's dad, back in the day. He was with us when we caught up with Muldoon and the Russian sub. After the arrest, the whole way back, he was weird. He treated Benny like somebody died."

"Will he talk to you?"

"Not coherently." He sighed again. "The RCMP and the Canadian government spent a week debriefing us. After that, we went to see Fraser's sister. By dogsled, no less. And that was also weird, you know? When we came over the hill, she was outside waiting for us."

"Waiting for you?"

"She's a sentinel, too. She heard us coming. She starts crying. Benny starts crying. They were still both a mess when we left three days later."

"But, you don't know what--?"

"They didn't say anything. They told stories about their old man. They ate deer jerky. That's it. Except Benny's hurting. And it's not getting better."

"Look, all I know is that animals are important. Spirituality, it's a help."

"So what do I do?"

"Make sure he knows you're there. That you want to help, even when you can't."

"That's your hot shot advice, college boy?"

"Until you can get him to tell you what he needs, I don't see what you can do. I mean, I don't know what his spirituality is like. Is he protestant? Catholic? Hindu? Wiccan? Does he need Great Unction? A fast? A Blessing Way? A Sweat?"

"A sweat?"

"You know, a sweat lodge."

Vecchio gaped. "That's a spiritual thing? A religious thing?"

"Yeah," Blair said, lost and newly re-horrified at the idea of a guide with no anthropology training.

"He knows people who make sweat lodges," he muttered to almost to himself. "I thought it was a sports thing or, I dunno, an Indian thing. Damn." He drained the soda. "I can't remember where they came from. I only know their first names."

"I'm sorry I--"

"No, no, kid, this is good. This is a start. As soon as we finish this case we... He'll know how to find them. It'll be all right." He sighed.

"I don't know if it'll be that simple," Blair said.

"No. With Benny it won't be simple. But this is the first time I've even had a clue about where to start."

 

***

"Yeah, I know," Kowalski had jumped right in on the case, laying out photos and reports. "Polk and Marshall were small potatoes. Why would anybody waste The Mountie on a couple of two-bit lynx poachers?"

"Puma," Fraser corrected.

"Right. Whatever. And bears. But the point is, we're not after the little fish. We're after the big fish." He passed Jim a photo. "Know this guy?"

Jim took it. "Ho Ng?" he asked, impressed.

"A top banana among fish," he said, badly mixing metaphors. "Fish and Wildlife has been after this guy for years, but nada. He's sharp. So we're starting at the bottom."

"Or were, until we messed up your buy," Jim said.

Fraser shook his head. "Marshall was the 'brains.' Polk was of limited usefulness after his partner died."

"So, what do we know about Ng?"

"Well, here's where we run into a whatchercallit. A hitch."

"It's not what we know," Fraser said, "so much as what we think we know."

They had great documentation. Jim wondered who took care of that. Kowalski struck him as hyper and disorganized. Fraser was probably patient enough, but he might not be willing to lay down the law for organization. Vecchio? If he was going to take charge of the filing, Jim guessed it would be a weirdly idiosyncratic system. He flipped through the file on Ho Ng, the maps showing what the feds were guessing about the movement of illegal furs through the Northwest, the lists of arrests over the past year.

They were still going over the case when he heard Blair and the other Ray step out of the elevator. "No, I've never heard of that, either. But we need to stop talking. We'll be overheard," Blair said.

"Benny's hearing isn't that good."

"Jim's is."

"Oh. Right. So, how are things with you?"

"Long, long story, Ray."

***

On the way home, Sandburg asked, "How does Ben seem to you?"

"Kind of strange. But I think that has as much to do with being Canadian as with being a sentinel."

"Heh. No. Did he smell okay?"

"Are you asking if he's sick?" Jim asked, trying to think back.

"I don't know. Maybe. Why?"

Blair didn't answer and Jim prodded, "Something you're not supposed to tell me?"

"Guides consult. You know. It's not gossip. But we get advice. From each other."

Jim thought about Fraser. His movements had been fluid. His eye contact had been good. He'd smelled mostly like the furs and organs in the lab at the PD. "Vecchio need advice?"

"Oh, yeah. Big time."

"I won't ask you to break a confidence," Jim said. "You can ask Jack Kelso."

Blair laughed limply. "No, I couldn't. Jack would so not get this." He paused. "Ben has stopped seeing animals. And other things. Ray is worried."

Jim's stomach knotted slightly. "In a fair world, not seeing hallucinations wouldn't be a problem."

"It works for him."

"Yeah," Jim agreed. He wondered if all of the spiritual, psycho-drama shit 'working for him' was something he should envy. When he had parked the SUV, he caught Blair's hand before he could open the door. "I saw him. Fraser. Fraser's animal. In the woods the other day." Jim paused to breathe, wishing this didn't sound so stupid. "So he still has an animal, even if he's not seeing it."

"What? Oh, you said you saw a moose. That was him?"

"Caribou," Jim corrected. "Yeah. That was him."

"Wow."

Jim laughed, shattering the mood. "Well, if you can't do better than 'wow,' I give up." He got out of the car.

***

For having spent the last three days officially "off" they hadn't gotten a lot of rest, Blair thought, stuffing down a hurried breakfast. They weren't going to take all of Saturday off, either. Jim was a secondary on a series of home invasions. The pattern was unusually clear: Saturday mornings, posh neighborhoods, perps who efficiently took out the alarms and always went for the most expensive stuff. Jim wanted to get a feel for what went on in the neighborhoods on Saturday morning. Obviously, they couldn't put that off till after the weekend.

So they spent the hours between eight and noon driving slowly through really nice parts of town. They saw people washing their cars, kids playing in parks, a fistfight between two teen-age boys, a couple of really young kids and their inept dad trying to fly a kite with not nearly enough wind.

After the first half hour, Jim had Blair drive while he concentrated on the view out the window and took notes. When Blair glanced over, he saw a couple of license plates and the names of a couple of businesses written on Jim's note pad. "Why those and not others?" he asked.

Jim just shrugged, so Blair chalked it up to sentinel intuition.

When Jim called the weird patrol off, they went shopping for next week's meals and Monday's barbeque and then returned to the house to do the advance cooking. As it became clear that Kowalski really was going to keep calling every ninety minutes to ask if the bait had been taken yet, Jim gave up and asked them to dinner.

They arrived brandishing a newspaper-wrapped package. Ray Kowalski showed it proudly until Jim turned away the pointy end with the tip of his finger. "That's it?" he asked doubtfully. Blair had to admit, it didn't look like the most valuable thing in the world.

Kowalski grinned, waving it again. "Narwhal tusk. It's from our confiscation warehouse. This is worth about six thousand dollars."

Jim leaned forward and sniffed it. "You got to be kidding me. For a piece of bone?"

Blair, unable to keep his hands off of it, gently took the white coil from them. "No, Jim, it's reputed to be an aphrodisiac." He wondered if his karma was being contaminated just by touching the thing. He wondered if it actually *worked* as an aphrodisiac. He wondered if it could be synthesized.

Not that that mattered. Blair hadn't dated in months, and there was no telling when Jim would be secure enough to share him.

Jim, looking a little irked, took the tusk away and handed it back to Kowalski. "Is that so? Do me a favor, Ray, and keep it away from the kid. He's liable to field test it. Sandburg, get them something to drink. I have to check on the sauce."

Everybody but Ben wanted beer. Blair kept two brands of premium water on hand; 'Sierra Springs' for Adrian (who only came over rarely, but wouldn't drink anything else) and 'White Mountain' so that Jim and visiting sentinels would have a choice.

While Jim was putting on his apron, Ray Vecchio laid his sports coat over the back of a chair and peeked into Jim's pot. "You know," he drawled, sniffing the sauce, "We're probably wasting our time here. It takes months to set up a sting like this."

"Well, you might be right. If that's the case, we'll just enjoy the evening and have a nice meal." He took the lid back and nudged Vecchio out of the way. Blair smiled his best non-threatening smile and handed them both a beer.

Vecchio didn't relent. "You know, you didn't have to go to all this trouble."

"Speak for yourself," Kowalski called from the living area. "We had desiccated meat for dinner three times this week."

Jim looked up to answer that, and Vecchio dipped a spoon into the sauce. "Mmm. This needs oregano."

Jim took the spoon back. "It's got oregano in it."

Vecchio smiled, and Blair wondered if he was being difficult on purpose. "I like oregano. Anyway, I'm Italian. You really wanna argue?" He handed Jim the bottle of dried oregano. "See? International cooperation."

Blair, feeling like a terrible coward, ducked out of the room to deliver drinks to the others.

Kowalski was checking out the stereo setup, flipping through the CDs. It occurred to Blair that somehow, his and Jim's collections had merged. If Blair moved, they'd have a heck of a time separating out their stuff. "Where's Ben?"

Kowalski pointed at the doors to the balcony. Carrying the water and his own beer, Blair went outside.

Ben was out of uniform, a leather jacket replacing the screamingly red coat. He leaned against the low wall with a perfect stillness that said he was very far detached from the immediate environment. "Ben?" Blair said softly, wondering if he was all right. Fraser was resilient and capable and experienced. He was famous across the continent as an indestructible sentinel. He wasn't going to get messed up or endanger himself zoning out at a dinner party.

On the other hand, focus was one thing, letting someone come up behind you was something else. Usually not a good something else. "Ben." Blair moved up beside him. Still no response. He let the cold water bottle brush against the back of Ben's hand.

Fraser jumped as though it had been scalding, and then dropped his eyes. "I. Er. That is."

"Hey, it's okay," Blair said gently.

"The water sounds completely different at home." He was still wide-eyed and breathless, his eyes on the flat, blue bay.

"I bet it does," Blair said.

Still not meeting his eyes, Ben opened his water and gulped half of it down. By the time he'd finished, Blair knew what to say. "I need your advice."

"Ah," Ben said. "Poaching?"

Blair looked casually away, watched a sailboat out on the water. "No, sentinels."

"I'm sure you know more about that than I," Ben said blankly. "I never studied it formally."

Blair plunged on, even more certain than before that this was the right way to go. "There are some things we don't talk about down at Rainier. It's bullshit, but," he shrugged. "Some things are easier to ignore."

"Hm. Such as?"

"Animals."

Ben drained the rest of his water.

"Jim doesn't have the background to understand. Or fit it into his life. You know?" No answer. Blair plodded on. "What my mom taught me about spirituality was mostly about searching for it. Not what to do when it pops up and says, 'hi, want an invisible friend?'"

Level, patient, Ben said, "What is Jim's background?"

"Oh. Well. You know. Pretty much upper class WASP. Except Catholic, not Protestant."

"Ah," Ben said, an edge to his voice. "Very nearly soulless then."

Blair winced and hoped Jim wasn't listening. But even if Ben didn't need to talk to somebody, this was a conversation Blair needed to have. "Yeah, that about covers it."

Ben softened slightly, his eyes pitying. "He's afraid," he said softly. "Not being in control of his life? Or not being sure he will know what is 'real' and what isn't?"

"Both, I guess," Blair answered.

Ben nodded. "When I first came to Chicago...." He paused for a long time. "Well. I know those fears. But 'invisible animals' aren't a threat to autonomy or reality. Not really. They can't make you do things. They aren't hallucinations, or half as overwhelming as, say, an ambulance siren. The people from that other world, they're just people."

"People," Blair said doubtfully.

"Materially challenged," he conceded, not sounding the least bit ironic. "But not all knowing. Or all powerful. Or particularly wise." He sighed. "Sometimes wise, but not always."

"Oh," Blair said, suddenly thinking about Naomi's friend Angela, who channeled. Blair had long suspected that Angela's spirit guide was a nut job, although when he was very young he'd wanted to believe that he was wise.

"You've been there," Ben said patiently. "Where the animals are us. Were you any wiser?"

Blair took an involuntary step backwards. He had been there, once, chasing animals. When Jim had been kidnapped, Blair had tried to find him, but that had been more like 'soul loss' than 'spirit walking.' What good was the other world to him if he could only get there when he was half-mad with terror and heartbreak, practically chased out of his body by his own desperation? "I'm no sentinel," he said.

Ben's eyes were disappointed, but his words were still patient. "We don't see them because we're sentinels. We see them because we're human. Because we're sentinels, it's just harder to ignore." He closed his empty water bottle and went into the house, leaving Blair to trail after him.

In the living room it appeared to be story time. Jim had gotten out chips and salsa, and was alternating chips--one for him and one for Diefenbaker. The Rays looked on pityingly and jealously guarded their own bowl. They were telling a story about bodyguarding Tracy Jenkins for part of her American tour earlier in the year.

"Perhaps you can help us," Ben said when the story was finished. "We're looking for a public pool." He hadn't settled on any of the furniture, but was restlessly moving around the room.

"Hell, not again," Vecchio whispered. Kowalski put his head in his hands.

"The Seventh Street Y has a deal with the PD," Jim said. "Anything special you're looking for in a pool?"

"We're teaching Ray to swim," Ben said resolutely.

Ray Kowalski raised one hand. "I can swim." He added miserably, after a moment. "I can dog paddle okay."

Ben looked at him for a moment, then turned his back to him and said to Jim, "So, the Seventh Street Y, you say?"

Vecchio sighed. "You know he's right. We may be in town for days and this case isn't moving fast."

"I swim fine."

Vecchio shrugged, "You 'barely avoid drowning if you have a lot of help' fine. You know he's right about this. Let's just get it over with."

Jim got up to put the pasta on. His cell phone rang just as he was checking the water. The atmosphere of the room shifted. Jim waited two unhurried rings and opened the phone. "Hello." He listened for a moment, then his grin lit the room. His expression was at odds with his hard, unimpressed inflection. "Yeah, I'm your man. Number one man in the northwest. Get you anything you need." He snatched the shopping list pad from the fridge and scribbled down an address. "We'll be there," he said, clicking off.

Blair wiggled his eyebrows. "They took the bait? They took the bait."

Jim shrugged modestly and went back to the stove. "We've got a meet tomorrow morning."

Most of dinner was spent on a protracted argument over who was going to make contact. The conflict wasn't bitter or anything, but Blair should have expected that a bunch of cops would be competitive about this. Jim was absolutely adamant about going. Blair didn't have a prayer of getting onto the field here. He wasn't a cop. He'd never trained for the game. Still, he'd really rather not send Jim out without him.

But no, that was just his own separation anxiety talking. Or his own over-protectiveness. Jim was a cop. He had to do cop things. Do his job. Live his life. No, it wasn't safe, but there wasn't a cop who was safe undercover. It wasn't different for Jim than for anyone else.

Judging by the way the Mountie and his entourage were scrapping over who would be going with Jim to meet the next buyer up the chain, Jim had made his own case for 'inter-agency cooperation,' but that only settled half the question. Everyone wanted to go with him.

Both Rays agreed that Fraser was less than stellar undercover, and there was no way he could pass as a slimeball who sold the pathetic remains of butchered endangered animals. (Ben maintained that he could play as cold and ruthless as anyone, but no one else seriously considered it.)

Kowalski and Vecchio told progressively more embarrassing stories of each other's undercover disasters and then dissolved into open argument. "Stan, this is going to take some polish. Some class."

"Hey, there. I can do class. I can also do subtlety, which you should try sometime."

Blair had made brownies for dessert. While he was cutting them up, Vecchio and Kowalski arm wrestled for the second position. Blair considered suggesting they both go, but giving that even a moment's thought made him cringe. He wouldn't wish them both on Jim for hours at a time. They were nice guys, but kind of vivid. He did wonder why *they* didn't think of both going. Possibly, they were unwilling to leave Fraser alone.

Kowalski won the wrestling match, but Blair suspected that he'd cheated. From the dirty looks he was giving, Vecchio thought so, too.

The rest of the evening was spent making plans for the operation the next morning. Fraser was urging the use of a tracking device. Jim was sure he wouldn't need one, and he didn't want to risk tipping off the suspects. Kowalski repeatedly pointed out that the back-up included a sentinel who could track through cities; even if the tail car lost them, Fraser could find them. Vecchio sided with his sentinel, pointing out that if Benny was worried about losing them in traffic, they ought to take that seriously.

Ben sighed, rubbing his forehead with a thumb. "We appear to have a tie," he said.

Kowalski shot him a dark look. "The wolf doesn't vote."

Everyone turned to look at Blair. Horrified, Blair looked at Jim. Jim looked back. His gaze was level but not certain. He wasn't sure Blair would side with him. He wasn't sure Blair would accept his judgment. Blair, of course, had only opinions, not judgment. What did he know about sting operations? Or tracking devices? It wasn't his area. His area was keeping Jim safe. As interesting and important as the case was, it was Jim's safety that mattered most to him. He'd do anything for that. Trouble was, he didn't know how. "No homing device?" he asked, wanting just one more reassurance.

Jim nodded.

"Okay."

***

Later, when they'd gone and Jim had showered, Blair slipped up the stairs to the loft and sat down on the bed. He passed his hands over Jim's face and chest, indulging his own need for information.

"You talked to him," Jim said. He captured one of Blair's hands between his own and held it lightly. "How did he seem?"

"Tense," Blair answered. "Wound so tight I felt like he'd crack in half. How did he smell?"

"All right. Not as bad as he did after spending a couple of weeks in a five by four cell, anyway. What did you talk to him about?"

"Animals."

"Fuck," Jim muttered, turning his face away.

"I'm sorry. I know you wish the whole thing would just go away."

"It isn't you that's forcing the issue, Chief. It isn't you that can't use it worth a damn."

"What do you mean?"

"I missed the message. That's what happened. I saw the reindeer, but I didn't know what it meant, that Fraser.... I mean, if I have to live with this crap, that's bad enough, but I'm messing it up."

Blair sighed. "Yeah. Ben was talking about that. Apparently they're not always helpful. You know? It would have been nice if Ben's animal had descended from the ether to give you a message, but right now I suspect it was just dropping by to say, 'hi,' or something."

"Oh. Lovely. Because the whole senses-thing wasn't like one long, mostly pointless trip to Weirdville already."

Blair laughed before he could stop himself. "Sorry, sorry. But, jeez, Jim. Life mostly is Weirdville."

"Maybe for you."

Right, because chaos for Jim was a full-body sensory assault, a continual rain of uncontrollable input that might, at any moment, be interrupted by horrible pain or life-threatening sickness.

"Whoa, Sandburg. I didn't mean anything by it. Don't--don't smell like that."

"Sorry. Hey." Blair took a deep breath. He tried to take his hand back and move away so his distress wouldn't smell quite so vivid, but Jim held on tightly. "Sorry."

"And don't apologize. Hell. I sound like an ungrateful prick, I know that. You gave me my life back. You let me do my job. Really well. Better, probably, than when I was normal. I'm not... I'm not an ungrateful prick. Blair...."

"It's okay. It's okay, Jim. You're doing great."

"Thank you. I'm grateful. I know what you did for me. I do."

"It's okay. It's okay."

They were silent together for a few minutes. "Can you relax?" Blair asked. "Get some rest?"

"Will you tell me something?"

"Sure. Anything."

"Sentinels need guide attachment."

"They need to know about guide attachment," Blair corrected quietly.

"Right. Okay. What do guides need?"

Startled, Blair laughed. "I don't know. Jack didn't research that. I'm pretty sure he doesn't give a shit."

Jim waited. Even in the dark, unable to see Jim's eyes, Blair felt carefully scrutinized.

"They have a whole list of characteristics it takes to make a good guide. Tests you have to take, psych profiles and things." He sighed. "I failed some of those tests, Jim. So I don't know."

"I'm not asking what it takes to be good. I already know that you're good, Chief. I'm not sure what I'm asking. Maybe I'm asking what you need to be happy."

Blair felt like the floor had disappeared beneath him. Sudden, this was sudden. Good, but fast. Jim was paying attention to more of his world. He was engaging a really subtle question, a connection-with-other-people question. It was a very good sign, something important to support. But Blair hadn't seen it coming, and he didn't know what to say. "I'm... I'm happy."

"What do guides need?"

Blair scrambled for an answer that wouldn't be too flip or carry too much pressure. "I think it must vary a lot." He choked off, realizing that a bland answer--true or not--would kill Jim's exploration. "I think it must be like art," he whispered. "Doing the work is the reward. Looking at the result. I like my job."

In the dimness, Blair could see Jim turn his head away. "There's something. Isn't there? A rule. You can't tell me what you need."

"There are some demands I can't put on you. There are things it isn't fair for me to ask. You aren't responsible for meeting my needs in the same way that I'm responsible for meeting yours."

"Because it is presumed I'm not capable?" Jim spoke very slowly and carefully, as though he was choosing every word individually.

"No. Because it's not your job. Or because you getting your needs met can't be contingent on doing what I want you to do. Does this make sense?"

Jim didn't answer.

"Hey? I'm not suffering here. I have asked a lot from you. Mostly about not giving me extra shit or keeping problems from me. Both of which are really hard for you, and you've--"

"I get it, Chief. It's okay." He took a deep breath. "I just. I know you've--"

"I've what?" Blair coaxed. When Jim didn't finish the thought, Blair guessed at the right thing to say. "I've--what? I've been happy. Maybe the department was right, and I'm not the right guide for most people. But I'm the right guide for you. I'm good. And I'm happy."

Jim nodded. "Okay."

"Can you sleep?"

"Yeah. I can sleep. Big day tomorrow."

***

It was almost deja vu, being in the back seat with the wolf, staking out Jim. He'd exchanged Ben for one of the Rays and it was daylight, but other than that it was very familiar. Even the thermos of coffee was the same.

The ancient green Riv was parked by the pier just north of Sampson's point. Vecchio had a pair of binoculars. Blair had a camera. So far there had been nobody to take pictures of except for Jim and Ray Kowalski, who waited besides Jim's SUV. Ray was pacing, which made Jim's stillness look even more calm and unruffled.

A limo zoomed up. Blair couldn't get a clear shot of the driver, but he snapped the license plate as Jim and Ray got in.

"Cool," Vecchio muttered. "Stay cool."

Ben picked up a laptop from the seat beside him and woke it up. Blair glanced down at the screen and nearly choked. Ben was logging onto something called "FBI Global Tracking System."

"What are you doing, man?" Blair yelped. "Jim said no transmitters."

Ben's fingers didn't slow. "I'm not tracking Jim. I'm tracking Ray."

"What if they got detectors?"

"Don't worry. We borrowed this equipment from the FBI. It's state-of-the-art and undetectable." A flat schematic with a blinking red dot appeared on the screen. "We have them."

"Kowalski is going to kill you, you know," Vecchio said, slowly pulling out after the limousine. "He's going to kill you and turn you into jerky, and I'm not going to stop him this time."

"You're exaggerating, Ray. Stan is going to do no such thing."

"You say that now. He's going to go ape shit. I hate to say this, but he's right. If you pulled this kind of shit with me--oh, wait, what am I saying? You do pull this shit with me."

"Now, Ray. I really think." He froze. "Oh, dear."

"What?" Blair demanded, not liking the sound of that 'oh, dear' at all.

"Oh, dear."

Blair looked over the seat. The blinking red dot was gone. "What happened? I thought you said that thing was undetectable."

Ben slammed the computer shut and stuck his head out the window. "Right at the corner. And right again."

***

Jim didn't like the smell of expensive leather. He wasn't sure why. Maybe it was a sentinel thing? Certainly, people were supposed to like the smell of expensive leather. Jim found it oppressive, depressing. He wondered what it was processed with.

In any case, concentrating on the depressing smell made it easy to fake bored.

Bored.

Rich.

A front man who sold very expensive contraband.

Jim didn't bother to look around the lushly appointed penthouse apartment. He didn't watch the suited henchmen with his eyes. Nothing here was new, and nothing was dangerous, nothing was even particularly interesting, not to him.

Kowalski was sitting on the edge of his seat. He was practically a poster child for 'jumpy.' Judging by the smell, though, not all of that edginess was real. Whatever. It seemed to work for him. A cop undercover would surely be pretending to be all slick and calm, not enthusiastic and twitchy.

They weren't left to wait for very long. A young man--Asian, average height, clean-smelling--came over and looked them up and down. He smiled coolly. "We have a problem here. One of you is wearing a transmitter."

Jim wondered where this was going. "Now, why would we go and do something stupid like that?"

"The signal's already been jammed. So, no one's coming to your rescue. Give me the transmitter or I'll have my men find it."

With a show of willingness, Jim stood up and spread his arms, opening himself to the bodyguard. "Help yourself." He tried not to think about some unknown thug pawing over him. He could already smell the man's cologne. Cloying, raw. God.

The smooth young man looked Jim over and pointed to Kowalski. "Him first."

Kowalski's eyes widened and he stood up. "Okay, fine." Then something shifted. Jim barely registered the hesitation, barely smelled the surprise. Kowalski sighed, nearly covering his agitation, and dug in his pocked for a handful of change. He selected a dime and handed it over. "Here it is."

"Clever," their host said. "I think you better leave. I don't deal with the police."

Kowalski snorted. "We're not police."

Jim pulled out a charming smile and said, "That narwhal tusk is worth $6,000. Now, that's an awful lot of trust for some people we don't really know. That locator is just an insurance policy. I'm sure you can understand that."

***

On the way out, Kowalski chatted up the guard, giving Jim a chance to listen behind them. Jim heard enough to know that their host wasn't alone and that the second man was the one giving the orders, but Jim still didn't have any names, any evidence, any new leads.

In the limo on the way back, Jim concentrated on looking calm and unimpressed. Only after they had been dropped off and Blair and the others were slowly coming around the corner did Jim drop his posture and turn around to say, "What the fuck was that with the transmitter?"

Kowalski sagged as though he'd sprung a leak. His head dropped back. "He tagged me. The son of a bitch tagged me this morning when he refilled my coffee." This first he said to the sky. The rest he said to the chase car that was slowly and casually driving past. "That ain't buddies, Fraser. That ain't buddies, and it ain't partners. I am so going to kick you in the head! Do you hear me? And you're paying for the damn transmitter."

Sighing, Jim got into the car.

***

Even after returning the undercover car to the station and having a short meeting at a coffee bar on the corner, it wasn't even noon by the time they got home. Jim changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and dragged Sandburg off to the sentinel gym on Rainier. Although it was too weird to admit, he wasn't being dutiful. He wanted--actually wanted--to be blindfolded on a balance beam maze while Sandburg played haunted house special effects through the sound system.

He was getting some control. Most days the senses were more help than inconvenience. They hadn't made a serious attempt to kill him in months. He liked that. He wanted more of that. While he wasn't sure exactly what Sandburg wanted him to learn from all these sentinels he kept exposing Jim to, one thing he had learned was that life could be very good or very bad and the outcome wasn't completely out of Jim's control.

Creaky door. Blood-curdling shriek. Sound of water dripping.

Jim's toe came to a cross-section in the maze. Jim listened, straining to hear not the sounds, but the echoes and voids. There would be more maze in one direction. In the other, it would drop off in a few steps. But no. If there was a difference, Jim couldn't hear it. He selected a direction and slid his foot forward.

A racing heartbeat suddenly blotted everything else out. It was far too loud, and Jim tried to pull his hearing back, drop the volume. Instead of the heartbeat receding politely, all the rest of the sound in the room abruptly vanished. Vertigo struck like a punch in the gut and Jim was falling--

It wasn't a long fall. He landed mostly on a mat. Both of which were good because he landed badly, not catching himself at all, not rolling.

He jerked when Sandburg touched him, even though he knew by scent who it was. Blunt fingernails seemed to rake his face as the blindfold came off. The light that replaced it was painfully white. Christ, and maybe he'd broken a rib falling half-across the little balance beam, because it hurt to breathe.

"Don't move, don't move." Sandburg's voice sounded far away and under water.

Jim grunted an acknowledgment.

"Be still. You're okay."

"What the fuck--" What the fuck happened? Where did it all go, all of a sudden? Why was everything off?

"Easy. Just breathe." Hands on his scalp, lightly on the back of his neck. "Jim, I need to know where it hurts. Did you hit your head?"

"No. Maybe. No." The headache wasn't from being hit. It was from the senses going wonky. Shit.

"Wiggle your toes."

Slowly, very carefully, Jim got an arm under him and pushed off the balance beam. Three inches off the floor. Five inches wide. Padded, a little. Damn near a deadly weapon.

"Hey, easy. Jim? What happened, man?"

"Oh. I dunno. I think somebody came into the room. There was this heartbeat, only I could really hear it, you know? It was louder than yours--"

Sandburg was shaking his head. "That was the sound system, Jim. A heartbeat is one of the special effects. What happened, did it throw off your sense of scale?"

Jim sagged. "Yeah. Shit. Scale."

"That's okay. The unexpected threw you." An arm around his shoulders. A light hand on his arm. "You were doing great up till then. This is pretty advanced stuff."

Jim rubbed his side. He could feel the heat from the rising bruise, but now that his perceptions were settling down, he could tell that the bones were whole. "All right. Let's try it again."

"Nah. Let's call it a day. Jim. We've been here for three hours. Usually we don't even stay more than one. Come on. Usually, you're the one watching the clock."

***

The next day was Memorial Day, and Jim and Blair were having a barbecue. The guests weren't arriving until two in the afternoon, and Jim had a couple of open cases he wanted to make some calls on in the morning. They headed home at eleven-thirty because there was a lot they hadn't finished.

Drinks they had. Ice--picked up on the way home. Jim was going to grill hotdogs and hamburgers, so there was lettuce and tomato to slice. And potato salad, both German and with mayo and mustard.

Blair thought about food and tried not to think about the party. There was a lot riding on it. Way more than he wanted.

Simon arrived first. He brought Daryl and homemade cookies. Blair sent Daryl in to taste the potato salad for quality control and pointed Simon to the balcony where Jim was trying to get the grill to light.

He didn't make it back to the kitchen. Jack and Marcia were at the door. Even in a sundress, Marcia looked stern and superior. Jack looked all right, to Blair's practiced eye. His color was good and his shoulders were relaxed. Jack held out a casserole dish he'd been carrying in his lap. "Baked beans," he said--and then Marcia smiled a little, adding, "I had nothing to do with it, so they're actually edible."

Jack swatted her gently. "They're better than edible. Are we too early, Blair?"

"No, perfect," Blair said, finding Jack's steady presence grounding. Normal. Fine. Everything was normal and fine.

The doorbell rang again. Blair repeated it again (Normal! Fine!) and opened the door on Jim's brother and sister-in-law and niece. Blair smiled (Normal. Fine.) and took their fruit salad with one hand and Chloe in the other. This was the reason they'd had the barbeque in the first place; showing Jim's family a room full of sentinels. Or, at least, why Blair had pushed for it. Stephen had brought the family over for dinner, and it was clear they were all behind the idea of sentinels.

But they were awkward. Uncomfortable. Politely weirded out. Blair hadn't blamed them; sentinels were an idea for Jim's family, not people. An idea they didn't reject, but you couldn't have a relationship with an idea. A party full of 'normal people' and sentinels had seemed like just the thing to humanize Jim for them. Show them what Jim's life was like. Not a bad thing for Jim, either, to have friends over for something social and human.

They'd invited the Mountie and entourage when it became clear they'd be killing a few days waiting for the next contact from the smugglers. No, they weren't particularly normal (as far as proving the 'sentinels are people, too' point) but they were friendly and polite, which Blair had always thought was better than normal anyway. Ben was charming, a gift which Blair wasn't above shamelessly exploiting. Diefenbaker was a conversation starter all in himself. Better, when he trotted in the door, little Chloe came racing over with a fearlessness that would be dangerous, unless she was a sentinel herself and could tell by scent when an animal was a threat. Dief, obviously, wasn't. He head-butted her firmly, which knocked her on her tush, but then she leaped on him and they were rolling at once like a pair of puppies.

Rodney and John arrived at the same time as Joel. As soon as Joel set foot in the door, Marcia--who had been on the other side of the room with her back to the door--stiffened and retreated to the bathroom. Which could potentially become a problem, since they only had the one. Jack looked after her and sighed, deflating visibly. Blair didn't dare say anything to him out loud. Even in a crowd like this, a sentinel with Marcia's hearing could follow several side conversations at once.

On the balcony, Jim handed off the grill to Stephen and went to Jack like he was being drawn on a string. Blair, on his way to get out more plastic cups, stepped to the side, out of the way, so he could watch. As deeply as he approved of Jim connecting with people, as badly as Jack had needed Jim's help while he'd recovered from the shooting, Blair couldn't quite reconcile himself to the sight of the two of them together: Jim's hand on Jack's shoulder, the swift descent to smell the top of Jack's head. Blair's sentinel and Blair's teacher-- was it any wonder they seemed to bond so quickly with each other? They had much more in common with each other than either one did with him.

Blair had no business feeling affronted. It wasn't like they were being unkind to him. Or like Blair had any kind of exclusive claim on either. Besides--Jim had problems with authority, deep ambivalence and a lot of ugly baggage, and as far as Jim was concerned, it was Blair who represented authority. Blair had the final word over when Jim worked and what medical care he got. Jack Kelso had authority over Blair, but as far as Jim was concerned, he was just an experienced, knowledgeable friend. It made perfect sense that the casual affection Blair had had to work to build between them would come much more easily for someone Jim saw as more of an equal.

It was good for Jim, to have access to Jack's experience and knowledge. And his strength. They were almost peers, much closer in age than Jim and Blair, although Jack had a few years on Jim....

It wasn't only Jim who benefited. Jack had been having a hard time. Marcia hadn't been up to caring for her partner alone after the shooting. She'd been emotionally overwhelmed. Anyway, her ability to handle physical aspects was limited to the most basic first aid. She didn't understand bodies, not the way Jim did.

Damn, that was another sore point, too. A part of Blair was angry that Jim had gone into police work and not search and rescue or EMS, because Jim was good with bodies and gentleness and biology. He knew pain--by smell, surely--and could tell when it had to be fixed by medication and when a change of position would be enough. He could predict--with shocking accuracy--when exhaustion would strike. When they'd been staying over with Jack and Marcia that first hard week, several times Jim had woken from a sound sleep and charged to the bedroom half a minute before Jack had started to choke on the mucus he wasn't strong enough to bring up without help.

Watching them together, his sentinel and his teacher, Blair felt both envy and shame. He had to get a hold of himself.

He was still trying to figure out how to do it when Ben materialized in front of him and asked, "Are you all right, Blair?"

"Sure, fine." He managed a smile. "How's it going?"

"Actually, I was hoping I could ask your advice."

Ben was polite and a little bit hesitant. Blair hastily dragged his attention back to the sentinel at hand. "Sure. What about?"

"Birthday presents."

Blair blinked. "Birthday presents?"

Ben looked--Blair checked--glum and a little embarrassed. Ben glanced around, leaned closer, and whispered, "I have three weeks to Ray's birthday. Kowalski. It... I choose bad presents. Notoriously bad presents. It has become something of an inside joke. Which really is better than raw disappointment. But still."

"Uh, yeah, that's a problem," Blair agreed. "What do you usually get?"

Ben put his hands behind his back and patiently explained that at first he'd carved figurines for his friends for birthdays and holidays, and at first they'd been well received, but after a while they seemed to make people nervous. "Then I tried other handcrafts. A dreamcatcher. A bathouse. But, of course, the gift isn't about the object itself but the symbolism, the message communicated."

"I see your point," Blair said. "Maybe you're just putting too much symbolism into the gift. Maybe it can't carry, you know, that much serious thought."

Fraser was shaking his head. "The gag-gift experiment was, well, disaster is probably too strong a word."

Blair nodded encouragingly.

"A few months ago we returned to Chicago for a visit. We all have friends there. I tried a more humorous..." he sighed. "I gave Detective Huey a sextant I'd made from a whale vertebra."

Blair snorted, nearly doubling up with laughter.

Fraser nodded. "Yes. Exactly. It was the funniest thing I could think of. But Detective Huey just thanked me politely and put it in a prominent place on his desk."

Blair stopped laughing. Damn. Poor Ben. "I think your problem is one of cultural milieu."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if you've never seen a sextant before, you're not going to find one made of whale vertebra funny."

Ben blushed. He looked away. "Oh," he said. "Obviously."

"Ben, traditional gag gifts...."

"Are vulgar and disrespectful in the extreme."

Right. Ben could understand the crude and contemptuous, but he couldn't fake it himself. "Look, what about something useful? Something related to daily life?

Ben nodded slowly. Then, he shook his head. No ideas.

"Well," Blair thought hard. "You all travel a lot, right? New luggage? Toilet kit?"

"It would speak to our common experience."

"Right." Blair smiled. "There you go."

***

Jack Kelso smelled like his dog just died. Since Jim could also smell healthy puppy on him, he assumed that the problem must be something else. Jim gave the tongs to Stephen. "Turn the hotdogs for me? I have to check on something."

Jim squatted beside Jack's chair and linked their hands lightly. Yes, in a house full of people, including people from work and Stephen. Damn it, yes, it was weird, but he was long past trying to conceal he was a sentinel and he wasn't going to apologize for it either. He put his body between Jack and the rest of the room and covered the cold hand with both of his own.

Strictly speaking, he didn't need either the proximity or the contact to read Jack's body. Jim was acutely aware of Jack's fragility. What little he couldn't smell or hear he could see. Despite the hours of exercise he put in every week, his disability had 'deconditioned' him badly. Jack had lost muscle mass. His digestion was erratic. His resting heart rate was eighty-five--fast for anyone, let alone a guide who meditated regularly. Jack didn't have a lot of reserves. Even on good days he smelled tired. The shooting, though not in itself very serious, had nearly killed him. So had the recovery.

"What's going on?" Jim asked softly.

Jack shrugged, his eyes sliding toward the hall that led to the back door and the bathroom. Turning his attention in that direction, Jim could hear Marcia grinding her teeth in the bathroom. He raised his eyebrows.

"I lied," Jack whispered. "I told her Joel wasn't coming." Despite the smell of utter disappointment and dread, he looked completely calm and relaxed. Poise. Jim didn't have nearly as much of it.

"She's going to yell," Jim muttered.

"Really? You think?" For just a moment, the poised facade cracked. "I'd hoped...." Then the facade returned. Jack nodded to where Chloe was playing under the table with Fraser's wolf. They had found (or she had made) a ball of aluminum foil and were passing it back in forth. "Your niece?"

Jim sighed. He had no idea what to do with a little girl. Or what they thought. Or what they needed. Or anything. "My niece," he agreed. At least he could get that far.

"Blair was going to try testing her...?"

"Yeah, last weekend. Blair gave her the Pendleton. It was inconclusive."

"Ah. I imagine there is some anxiety there."

Jim tried to come up with an accurate and fair answer. "I can't complain about how Stephen and Linda are handling it."

"I meant you," Jack said. "The idea of a child you know and care about suffering what you've gone through must be very daunting."

Jim looked at Chloe. She seemed to be happy enough. The wolf had fallen asleep and she was carefully un-crumpling the foil ball. "There's nothing wrong with being a sentinel," he said.

Jack gently pressed the hand he was holding.

Jim relented and gave up some of the truth. "She won't be ignorant. She'll know how to protect herself. I think I can do that much."

"It's not just about avoiding the nightmares, Jim. Life can be very good for sentinels." Jack nodded toward McKay and Sheppard, who were in the kitchen arguing over the deviled eggs Joel had brought.

Jim rolled his eyes.

Still silently, Jack indicated Adrian, who had pinned Joel by the window and was griping about their progress on a case they were working together. Jim would have hoped the party would provide an escape from work, but Adrian had a one track mind. Jim had to admit that Jack had another point; Adrian's worst problems were personal, not biological.

Jack nodded at the corner where Blair and Fraser were standing close together, talking very seriously. "He's a legend," Jack said voicelessly. "A beacon."

Not according to Blair. According to Blair, Fraser was having serious problems, and they were psych problems, which sucked. Jim had just about reconciled to the endless and dangerous physical problems. Dragging psych into it now... But Jim wasn't going to say anything about that.

Still. Jack's point was made. Nobody made it through life completely unscathed, but, at the same time, being a sentinel wasn't a guarantee of doom.

Jim glanced at the still-shut bathroom door and patted Jack's shoulder. "Right," he said, offering help he hadn't been asked for. He cornered Ray Vecchio by the dip, guided him into an acoustic shadow near the stairs and whispered, "You need to use the bathroom, and don't be particularly polite about it."

Vecchio was cool. He didn't even ask why, he just moseyed down the hall and knocked firmly on the door. "Hey, toots. You wanna let somebody else have a turn?" Which of course brought her storming out. Before she could vent her irritation on Vecchio, Fraser closed on her with polite apologies and charming embarrassment on behalf of his friend.

Really, watching people knocked on their butts by Fraser's sweetness and unearthly charm was kind of funny. When Jim had first met him, Fraser had been worn down by a couple of weeks of confinement, filth, and inadequate food. Seeing him clean and reasonably well rested was a completely different experience. One Marcia certainly wasn't ready for. Flustered, her irritation forgotten, she took a step backwards. It was, in its way, a step forwards. Marcia was out and circulating. Joel might have a shot, if he didn't rush it. If he was still interested.

Before he was tempted to get any more involved, Jim retreated back to the grill and Stephen, who was happily flipping meat and talking to Rodney McKay about rollercoaster safety. Or possibly rollercoaster insurance. It was a little weird that they both knew about it. Jim's relatives weren't supposed to have things in common with sentinels.

Except they did, because they were arguing about the future of magnetics in "wild mouse" loops. Stephen didn't think you could get a good ride safely. Rodney thought you could, and was trying to explain how by scribbling on a napkin. Jim poured them each a beer and nudged them off to the side.

Jim wondered what William Ellison thought of his younger son making his living playing with toys. Apparently there was money in revamping theme parks and race tracks and concert venues, but Jim suspected that that wouldn't be enough, not for dad. In his early thirties, and Stephen was still goofing around with rides.

Stephen hadn't talked about Dad, not in the present tense. They might not be in contact. Not that Jim blamed him. Just thinking about the old man was making his stomach churn.

Jim took the last round of burgers off the grill and sent the last platter back inside. "Have you got an old tennis ball?" Ray Kowalski asked.

"No, why?" He had some golf balls in the closet upstairs, but if Kowalski wanted to play tennis that wouldn't work.

"There's a park a couple of blocks away. I thought I might take the kids down to throw a ball around with Diefenbaker."

Sure enough, Darryl, Chloe, and Fraser's wolf were standing by the door looking hopeful. Tossing a ball was one of very few activities that would be the same for big kids and little kids both. "I've got a golf ball, will that do?"

Coming back down stairs with the golf ball, Jim met Stephen. "Jim? Is this okay?" he asked.

"What, playing in the park with a dog?"

"It's a police dog, isn't it? Aren't they...?"

"Dief isn't an attack dog." But the center of Jim's gut felt funny. Stephen was a dad. He worried about dogs with big teeth and crossing the street and leaving his kid alone with somebody he didn't know. The sentinel thing and any possibility that Chloe was some kind of genetic freak wasn't even on his radar most of the time. "I'll send Blair with them. Chloe's used to him."

Jim had to lean sideways on the balcony to catch a glimpse of the little group on its way to the park. He wished he were going too, but it was his party.

The whole event was supposed to be mostly for Stephen, right? Get Jim's brother in a room full of sentinels, let him see the truth of their normalcy and weirdness and make his own judgment. Well, that and matchmaking Joel and Marcia. Possibly Blair had had some kind of 'sentinel education' ulterior motive.

Maybe that was what was going on. Maybe Jim was looking around at a room full of sentinels and--? What? Freaking out? He wasn't freaking out. These were his friends. Well, friends and irritating acquaintances. Nothing shocking or new here.

Jim sat down on one of the folding chairs. Joel and Marcia were standing awkwardly in the kitchen, not looking at each other, but talking in each other's general direction. Jim couldn't bring himself to eavesdrop; they were pathetic enough without being a spectacle.

By the table, Jack and Vecchio were talking about sentinel medicine. Jack was being patient--far more patient than when he talked to Blair. Vecchio's qualifications as a guide must be truly horrifying.

Fraser and McKay were on the tiny balcony next to Jim, arguing about hockey like it actually mattered.

Stephen's wife Linda was sitting on the couch with Sheppard. They were exchanging pet stories, which was so trivial and mundane that it felt kind of surreal.

Jim listened outward. The park was small and close. Chloe's squeal was piercing. "Daryl, throw it really, really high!" Jim wondered if Stephen would worry less if he knew that his daughter was still easily in range of Jim's hearing. Or would he decide once and for all that Jim was just too odd to expose his family to.

At the table, Sharona was trying to convince Adrian that it was safe to eat the potato chips.

Joel and Marcia were headed toward the door together. It was a good sign, but their body language said they were still at the negotiation stage. Because it was important to Jack, Jim hoped it worked out for them. Well, maybe he hoped it for himself, too. If Marcia could have a good relationship with a normal human, then anybody could.

Rodney laughed suddenly--a sharp, unexpected sound--and began to sing the Canadian national anthem. Fraser jumped in on "True patriot love in all thy sons command," and the sound of it changed. The harmony was very tight, and did things in Jim's ears that he had no words for. Most music lately had been a little disappointing. Recorded music sounded flat and canned, and even the best speakers sounded weirdly limited. Live music, while vibrant and vivid, was usually a little off--acoustically uneven or slightly off pitch. Jim hadn't noticed any of this before, when he'd had normal ears and a normal life. He'd sort of gotten used to it since coming on line.

Except the two guys singing "O Canada" on Jim's balcony were perfect. The difference was like moving from black and white pictures to color. Or from recycled building air to wind on the beach. The same, but completely different.

Jim didn't breathe until they finished. Except they didn't finish. Rodney started again at the beginning, and this time Ben came in as a shadow, just slightly behind and singing in French. Pitch and timing remained perfect--except perfect was too shallow a word for the bright feeling that seemed to grow in Jim's hands and feet and gut.

Again they finished and started over. This time they alternated lines in French and English. Ben stepped closer to Rodney, and the resonating voices seemed to merge and then multiply. The hairs on Jim's arms were already standing up, and now they began to shiver with sympathetic vibration. He'd had no idea--no idea--that any sound like this was humanly possible. Yet here he was, hearing it, and the impossible music seemed to hold secret meanings Jim couldn't even guess at.

This time, when they reached the end of the verse they really did stop. The silence was shocking. Sudden, cold, solid, like a thing Jim could touch. The quiet filled every corner of the room--almost every corner of the world--for a long moment, and then the party guests applauded. The thin, flat sounds trembled against Jim's skin.

Jim held still, not trusting himself to move. He was standing up, but didn't remember moving. He wasn't sure where the floor was. Or where he would go if he did move. Or what the hell he'd just heard. He didn't know--

Stephen--his movements sounded worried--was crossing the room, closing fast. Jack caught him at the door to the balcony and halted him. "He's fine, Stephen, give him a minute."

"Look at him. He's--something's wrong. What's it called? Zoning?" Stephen's voice, quiet but near panic. Jim tried to rouse himself, but it was hard to think, impossible to focus.

"He's zoning, yes. But he's fine. He's in a safe environment. He's not under stress. He's processing a very complicated input. Let him be." Jack's voice, level and calm.

Jim breathed in and out, trying to collect himself enough to focus on their faces. They weren't standing very far away.

"You're a guide," Stephen said hesitantly. "You work with Blair."

"I'm his supervisor."

Jim wasn't sure how far away they were. Or who else was around. He tried--hard--to shift his attention, but the senses had taken charge and Jim had no control.

Stephen smelled like pain. He smelled like worry and fear and shame. Jim thought, He gives a shit, and it should have been a comforting thought. A relief. A certain place to start: Stephen cared.

But instead of feeling a relief, a thawing, a warmth--all Jim felt was the same, flat, empty feeling he'd felt about Stephen for years.

Jack was saying, "There's nothing to fix because there's nothing wrong. It looks scary, especially if you've never seen it before. But he's not in distress or any danger."

Stephen swallowed hard, trying to compose himself. He still smelled afraid. He said, "I can't see him breathing."

"Jim is breathing as much as he needs to."

Jim tried to push past the flat, empty feeling. He could remember--vividly, now--being very young and loving his brother. He could remember when there were only two people in the world Stephen trusted; one was Sally and the other was Jim. Surely he still had those feelings. But under the flat, hard feeling was only the memory of Stephen lashing out. And fear.

"You can't ask him to fight what he is in order to become what you expect. If he tries it, he will fail. And he will probably die."

"So anything goes?"

"Not at all. A great many things are very dangerous. Not this mild altered state." A pause, and then, "We're watching him. I'm not the only guide here. Blair is not very far away. If he gets into trouble, he won't be alone."

"You're the expert." It sounded resentful as much as disbelieving.

"Stephen--I understand better than you think. Wanting to take control. Wanting to fix things. Being tired of fear. But with Jim, you have very little to be afraid of. Ah. Stephen, go get a chair. He'll want to sit down."

Then, suddenly, Jack seemed to be right next to him. "You okay?" The question was almost casual. Jim wouldn't have thought much of it, if he hadn't been observing the previous conversation.

"Yeah," Jim answered automatically. He blinked. His mouth was dry. His skin felt cold. "What the hell was that?"

"You were distracted by the music and lost the usual distance you keep from the world," Jack said, like that sort of thing happened every day.

"That wasn't--I meant, the singing. What was that?"

Jack shrugged. "They have undeviated pitch and a great deal of practice. I also expect they have enough talent for acoustics to compensate for any imperfections in the venue. But, Jim, I can't hear well enough to appreciate it."

Stephen returned then, carrying a chair. Jim murmured a thank you and sat. Jack had been right. He felt strangely tired and a bit detached. "Are you all right?" Stephen asked.

No, Jim thought, I'm a freak. The thought was strangely without bitterness. If this was being a freak--being completely knocked on his ass by a bit of casual music that Jack and Stephen couldn't even hear properly--then it wasn't so bad. Yes, he'd done a freaky sentinel thing at a party, in full view of his boss and his family, but nobody seemed to be upset or even have given it particular notice.

Except for Stephen. From his seat on the chair, Jim looked up at his baby brother. I'm the same, he wanted to say. I don't know what the hell I am, he wanted to say that, too. You don't have to do anything but be here, that was what he was supposed to say. But it might be a lie; Jim wasn't sure that Stephen sticking around was what he wanted. As much as he'd missed him, Stephen wasn't someone Jim knew how to trust.

It hadn't been Jim's fault that William Ellison had been a lousy father. It wasn't Stephen's fault, either, but Stephen's defection had hurt.

What kind of bastard was Jim, to hold a kid's frustrated and hurt lashing out against him so many years later?

There was a clamor in the hall. Sandburg, Kowalski, the wolf, and the kids came bursting in with a brilliant rush of energy and noise. Jim's ears followed his partner as Blair stopped at the cooler for a bottle of water and came out onto the balcony, looking for Jim. Stephen shot Blair a relieved look and ducked out of the way. He can relax now, Jim thought. My keeper has arrived.

"Hey," Blair said cheerfully. "Did we miss anything?"

"The musical performance of the century," Jack said. "It turns out Rodney and your friend Ben have voice training."

"Oh. Wow. Damn," Blair said. "That's not something you see every day."

Jim didn't understand, but Jack explained, "Most sentinels, even the most talented--especially the most talented--don't perform publicly. The equipment, the instrumentation, it's never good enough. Acoustics are never clean. The few sentinels who go into music professionally, they earn their reputations as being perfectionist bastards."

Sandburg sighed. "Sentinels singing, pure gold, man, pure gold."

Chloe raced up, thrusting a soggy golf ball into Jim's hands. "Thank you, Uncle Jim." She climbed up into her father's arms, talking at high speed about the trip to the park and the magic dog and how cool Daryl was.

About half a minute into the display of familial cuteness, Jack's head shot up. He touched Blair's hand with a single finger. Blair and Jack talked for a moment in some silent guide code, and then Blair turned to listen very closely to Chloe.

When Stephen carried her off to the table where--Jim listened shamelessly--Chloe harangued him for cookies, Blair shook his head. "I don't see it," he said.

"I listened to sentinel recon reports for a very long time. That is what they sound like."

Blair chewed his lower lip. "Memory at this age is weird. You know they all have that almost-photographic recall. Even if she is a sentinel now, she might not be after the transition."

Jack turned to Jim. "I assume Stephen wouldn't remember what you were like at that age."

"He would have been three," Jim said.

The doorbell rang. It was Brown and Rafe getting off shift. They'd stopped and bought pies on the way. Jim got up to meet them, pointed out the now-cold burgers, the still-hot chili in its crock pot (Rhonda), and decided he felt like eating pie.

Joel and Marcia came back. While Joel was thanking Jim for a nice time, Marcia asked John and Rodney to give Jack a ride home.

Chloe had fallen asleep in her dad's lap while eating cake. "I'll put her in Blair's room," Jim said, holding out his arms.

Chloe was amazingly small and light. She smelled like grass and wolf and chocolate. Jack thought Jim and Chloe were the same. Blair repeatedly said that sentinels who grew up learning who they were and what it meant didn't have the problems Jim had had his first year. But Jim knew plenty of sentinels with great training and support growing up who still had a hard time as adults.

If Chloe wasn't a sentinel, there were so many things she would never know. Blair and Jack and Simon--they were practically half-blind and mostly deaf. The things they didn't know about the world around them--the people around them, it was kind of frightening.

Linda followed Jim into Sandburg's room. She pulled back a quilt that was being used as a bedspread and held it out of the way, covering Chloe as Jim set her down.

***

Blair came back from the park slightly sweaty (from running around after kids) and deeply abstracted. Watching wolf, teenager, and small child made it clear that while they were all participating in the same activity, they didn't all understand it in the same way. Blair found himself distracted by trying to figure out how they thought of each other.

And watching how they communicated. It was clear that Diefenbaker's simple and direct communication worked much better with Chloe, who was totally present, than with Daryl, whose mind was clearly somewhere else most of the time. What were they doing, while they seemed to be doing the same thing? Where did they learn it?

When they got back to the loft, Jim was in a very promising-looking conversation with Stephen and Jack. Jack, listening to Chloe talk, thought that she was probably a sentinel. Without a clear determination, though, there was nothing anyone could do but watch her very closely and be careful when giving her medications or exposing her to potentially overwhelming environments. With her family history, they would need to do that anyway. Blair didn't want to deal with it. Not yet. Jim was using up all the attention Blair could spare.

He wandered over to the cooler and fished in the melting ice for a beer. Adrian Monk and John Sheppard--not a combination he would have expected boxed him. "Rhonda says you had a meeting with Gilbert Grissom on Friday. How could you not tell anyone? He's the--he practically invented--his work in forensic entomology sets the standard for everyone everywhere! And you never said a word."

Blair blinked. "I didn't realize you were interested in bugs," he said. He honestly hadn't thought to mention it to anyone.

"Oh--well, I'm not. I mean I'd never. But it's good that other people are experts in insects and other biological... things."

"You have to realize that Grissom is Jack's only credible critic."

Blair spun around. John was looking at him as though he were some kind of traitor.

"It was police business," Blair said. "He was in town and wanted to share information on a case. It had nothing to do with being a guide. Or his position on anybody's guide research."

"And you let it go at that?" John's voice was icy. He and Rodney had been one of Jack's developed case studies.

"We do Jim's job. That's the point." Blair looked around. The loft was very small. Jack was in the kitchen, talking to Sharona. He was starting to look weary. "He's given me some of Grissom's stuff to read, you know? Because practically nobody else works with groups of sentinels."

John was very still for a moment, frowning slightly. "How seriously... how important do you think this is?"

Blair shrugged and looked around. "How serious does it look?"

"Blair, sentinels didn't evolve to congregate with each other. Simple communities couldn't support more than one or two specialists like this. The rarity would have made them too valuable to--"

"Mostly, yeah. Probably," Blair admitted. "But that may not be the point. The world has changed. A lot. If they don't find a way to adapt to those changes-" Blair stopped. There were a lot of sentinels in the room. Some things weren't discussed in mixed company.

Adrian didn't need it spelled out for him. "We'll die," he said. "We already are."

John shot him a quelling look. "How is bringing them together going to help?"

"For a start, I think their experience living their lives is worth something. Particularly since they don't all get a chance to work out what it means to be a sentinel as kids," Blair hissed.

Rodney ambled up, munching on a cold hot dog. "If you're going to fight, I want to put money on the little guy. He's feisty." He shot Blair a rough grin and offered his partner a bite of the hot dog. Something passed between them, and John's aggression faded. "I wouldn't have minded knowing some sentinels when I was a kid. Seeing somebody who'd actually survived." He finished off the end of the hot dog and prodded John in the side. "We need to go. We're Jack's ride and he's smelling tired."

***

People started clearing out at about nine, which Blair decided wasn't an indication of party failure since it had started at two and everyone had to work the next day. Adrian volunteered to stay and help clean up. Blair didn't understand Sharona's frantic head-shakes until he put on two pairs of latex gloves and began to sort the garbage by size and food group.

Jim hastily reminded Adrian that Sharona still had to pick up her son from a friend's house and assured him that he could make it up to them next time.

Jim, thank god, wasn't so overwhelmed by the chaos in his life that he had to compensate by organizing the garbage, but they did need to get the mess cleaned up and the trash out in the dumpster, or the smell would keep him awake.

It didn't take them long to get the worst of the detritus gathered up and carried out. Blair put the leftovers in the fridge and joined Jim on the balcony, where he was scrubbing off the still-warm grill with a metal brush. "I think that went well," he said.

"Yeah. No disasters. No public embarrassments. I'm kind of surprised."

"Not that you're a pessimist."

Jim covered the grill, brushed off his hands, and said, "Memorial Day. I know it's well meant and respectful. But I can't just rip a day off the calendar and say, 'Oh, it's Memorial Day. Time to grieve now.' It doesn't work like that. I'm glad we did this."

Right. Because Memorial Day was a military holiday, really. And Jim had a lot of baggage. It seemed like they'd just dredged up all that baggage with Norman Oliver. Jim really did deserve a break. "Want to go see what's on television?" Blair asked.

***

Blair had long stopped being disoriented and slow when the phone woke him up. As a graduate student, he'd been a largely nocturnal creature, sleeping until comparatively late in the morning to make up for long nights doing homework. His real life--long awaited, at last arrived--kept erratic hours. Calls in the middle of the night were usually Simon.

Blair didn't bother trying to race Jim to the phone. Jim kept a cordless upstairs, and even if he were running down the stairs, Blair probably couldn't beat him. Instead (stifling the groan he didn't want Jim to hear), he got out of bed and reached for clean underwear.

He was just putting his socks on when Jim opened the bedroom door and shook his head. "False alarm," he mouthed, the phone still to his ear. "Was anyone hurt?.. Yes, I understand.... Yes, we can do that. Sure. What? Oh," he glanced at Blair, "The cat is named after I M Pei. Right."

Blair took his socks back off since it looked like they weren't rushing out the door.

"Sure. Hey, good luck, huh." Jim clicked off the phone. "That was John Sheppard. He and Rodney have to go out of town. They've asked us to feed the cat, since their usual cat sitter isn't available."

"Oh, sure. What happened?" Jim was looking a little unsettled.

"There was a bridge collapse in California. It was one of the ones McKay inspected last year. There are people missing."

Blair glanced at the clock. Not even seven. The alarm wouldn't go off for another five minutes. "It's early yet," he said. "The traffic--"

"Rush hour starts early down there, Chief. Apparently, it's pretty bad."

Oh. Right. Hell.

Well, they were up. "Feel like breakfast?" Blair asked.

It was a long and tedious day. Waiting as they were on the big poaching case, Jim didn't want to get involved in anything that they couldn't back away from. They did paperwork. They looked at a couple of new crime scenes for other detectives. They interviewed witnesses.

Joel was out all morning testifying, but Blair was waiting when he came back after lunch. He was tempted to tease Joel about leaving the party early with Marcia, but since there was a good chance things hadn't gone well--or that even if they had it wouldn't last--he just said, "So what's new?"

Joel snorted. "I've turned into a lovesick idiot."

Blair grinned. "Congratulations! How's it going?"

"Well, she's still talking to me." Joel nodded toward the breakroom, and Blair followed him in and shut the door. "She's not convinced I'm serious."

That was a surprise. Joel was both practical and sincere. If Blair had to select one of his friends as an example of 'serious' it probably would have been Joel. Blair's surprise must have shown, because Joel said, "She thinks I don't know what it means, being with a sentinel. That I'll, you know, give up when I find out." For just a moment, Joel looked a little bleak. "I know it's inconvenient. I get that. And--and--I know she's fragile. I've read up. I know what that means."

Blair thought about how worried he'd been in the first weeks working with Jim. It hadn't been clear how much Jim could recover from Brackett's mistreatment. Or even how much of Jim's illness had been caused by Brackett in the first place. Blair had been scared, but not for very long, because Jim had been pretty healthy, really. Marcia, though, wasn't nearly as resilient as Jim. Jack was doing his best--his very best--but her hyperactive senses were linked to a hyperreactive body and there was only so much that could be done. "Are you sure, Joel? Really sure?"

"Blair. I diffuse bombs for a living. I can't--I just can't get hung up over what might happen a month or a year from now."

How the hell could you argue with that? From Joel's perspective, every day must be a good day. Blair had decided that a lifetime of usefulness had been worth the grief that came with sentinels. Maybe for Joel, it was love that made it a fair trade. "I see your point. But you can't rush her. You're seeing the world right now, but she's dug in for the long haul."

"Yeah. I hear you. So, tell me, what's a good gift for a sentinel."

Blair grinned. "Well, perfume is out."

"Gee, thanks. Anything else really obvious?"

"Cooking equipment is usually a safe bet. Sentinels are finicky. But I understand she's not much of a cook. Really high quality herbal tea or chocolate should be okay. Or nice coffee."

The ten minutes Blair spent talking to Joel was the high point of the day. The smuggling contact didn't call.

After work, they picked up the key to John and Rodney's from Marcia and went to feed the cat. The little condo overlooking the bay was pleasant and very tidy. The cat--I M Pei--was pampered and friendly. The little cans of expensive cat food had been left out.

When they got home, the bridge collapse in California was all over the news. Three people dead, as many as a dozen more missing. Every search and rescue sentinel and police dog in the state had been drafted for disaster site. There was still no official word on what had caused the collapse, except that it hadn't been a quake. Everyone who wasn't flinging accusations was speculating wildly.

The smuggling contact didn't call that night either. Blair gritted his teeth and tried not to fidget. Jim went to the gym to work out. Blair went shopping. Dinner was stir-fry and rice.

The call came the next morning while they were eating breakfast. Blair practically held his breath until Jim shut his cell phone and said, "We have a meet."

The meet was for lunch at a four star restaurant downtown. Jim and Kowalski dressed up. So did Vecchio and Fraser; electronic surveillance was out, but Fraser could follow the conversation from across the room. Not easily--his hearing wasn't nearly as good as Jim's--but he was predisposed to filter for any conversation one of his partners was in.

Blair was going to be the 'outside man.' His job was walking a leashed Diefenbaker in the little park up the street, watching the restaurant from the outside. He wasn't sure why; there wasn't anything to see. He said as much to Ray Vecchio, who shrugged and said, "Actually, kid, you're window dressing. We want to give the idea that we're organized and professional. With resources."

So Blair missed all the excitement. He stayed in the park looking conspicuous, and, hopefully, not amateurish. Diefenbaker was a huge help with the casual end of things. He marked the park's five trees a total of (Blair counted) thirty-four times. What could be more inconspicuous than a dog lifting his leg?

Blair didn't want to speculate on the capacity of that dog's bladder.

When it was over, they met in Vecchio's hotel room. Jim was carrying a two-page shopping list of endangered animal parts.

"Is this a problem?" Blair asked. That was an awful lot of gall bladders.

Vecchio laughed. "You should see the warehouse."

"So we can fill this by Friday afternoon?" Jim asked. It was Wednesday now.

"No problem."

***

Simon was satisfied with the progress of the joint operation. A lot of his satisfaction, Jim suspected, came from the fact that he had two federal agencies thanking him for his department's exemplary cooperation.

After reporting in to Simon, Jim took the bagged shopping list up to Forensics for printing. It was a long shot, but sometimes chemical treatment could produce prints even Jim's eyes couldn't see.

He heard the argument when he was still one floor away. Monk was saying, "No. Absolutely not. I'm sorry, but you can't make me."

Carolyn's voice had a hard edge he remembered well from their married days. "It's your job." Jim hesitated, wondering if his life would be easier if he just came back later.

"Adrian, why?" Sharona asked. "Is it the blood? Or the meat?"

"Yes," Monk said.

"Because, you know, it's all very fresh--" Sharona said.

"You do find blood at crime scenes. Fairly often, actually," Carolyn grated.

"The fact is that if I walk in there I will spot literally dozens of health violations."

Both women protested with the placating voice that never worked.

"No. All right? If I see a cockroach or a stray hair or a trace of feces I'll never eat again."

"If you know the violations are there, how is it you are able to eat now?" Carolyn wasn't even trying to pretend she was being patient.

While Sharona was saying, "For the love of god, don't help us--" Monk was saying dismally, "Some days I really don't know."

Because he just couldn't listen any more, Jim stopped lurking in the stairwell and came out. "I'll go look at your crime scene if you'll put a rush on this." He smiled winningly and held his bag out to Carolyn.

Monk looked at Jim with incredulous pity and fled. Carolyn smiled gratitude and something calculating. "I'll process it myself. And if you don't tell me how disgusting it was afterwards, I'll throw in a dinner Merton's."

Jim wondered what he'd gotten himself into as he went to collect his partner. He found Sandburg in the break room buying a sandwich out of the machine. He caught Sandburg's hand as he started to unwrap it. "You might not want to do that."

"You got lunch at the nice restaurant. I stayed outside and walked the dog."

"Wolf. We've got a crime scene at a meat packing plant."

"Huh," he said. "I've never been to a meat packing plant."

Jim shrugged. "Monk wouldn't go."

Wincing, Sandburg put the sandwich in the little fridge.

***

The victim and the suspect had both been line workers, far from where the livestock were actually killed. That was the good news. The bad news was that their job on the line had been disarticulating leg joints.

It smelled like blood. Old blood, new blood. And meat. Jim could barely make out the fight-smells and the cop-smells for all the blood-smell. The air was very cool, and that helped. Sort of. Jim breathed shallowly through his mouth. Sandburg, looking a little shocked, took Jim's hand.

The line was stopped. Meat was everywhere. Some of it was a body, still and crumpled on the floor. Jim went to have a look there first. The coroner had been there already and tagged the body for pick-up. The wound to the torso was clearly visible, jagged, and large. Jim's mind suddenly separated out human blood-smell from beef-smell and he was nearly sick.

"Wow," Sandburg said, and Jim nearly laughed aloud. He clamped his teeth down and got to work.

The murder weapon was an old meat hook. It had already been printed and bagged, so Jim hefted it thoughtfully. Heavy. Unbalanced. A weapon of opportunity, heat of the moment sort of thing. The hook was sharp and jagged, but not easy enough to control to make it anyone's first choice for mayhem. The suspect was in the corner, complaining at the uniform guarding him and demanding his lawyer. The detective from homicide--a young guy, possibly on his first solo--was interviewing witnesses.

Jim paced the floor, looking for any trace that this wasn't what it looked like; a disagreement that turned ugly. It did all look plausible. The perpetrator had defensive wounds coming up on his hands and arms, suggesting a fight. The witnesses all agreed that the two men had been close, but argued a lot, and that no one else had been involved in the incident. Jim eased closer and tried to sniff him for lies or drugs or *something* and immediately regretted it.

Sandburg said suddenly, "You know, this goes on the list of things we don't tell my mom," and Jim had to laugh. The abattoir seemed surreal rather than overwhelmingly nasty now.

The young detective came over. "Well? Do we send the evidence guys home or keep looking?"

Jim sighed and tried to think about something besides blood and meat. "There's nothing here we can use." But. "Everybody says they were close, right? Tell me, if you just accidentally killed your buddy with a meat hook--right in the middle of a place covered with signs that continually harangue you to be careful--would you be thinking about your lawyer?"

The kid shrugged. "Everybody also says they weren't the sharpest tools in the shed."

Well, Jim had given him a chance to see it for himself. "Pull your people out of here. Search the lockers. Search their domiciles. Search their cars. *Something* isn't right." Trying to look stern and experienced, Jim turned on his heel and stalked off.

He made it to the parking lot before he threw up the fantastic lunch.

Sandburg wanted to head home, but Jim couldn't let either of them get into the SUV smelling like a slaughterhouse, so they walked around the block--four times--trying to let the worst of the stink dissipate. On the third trip, Sandburg's cell phone rang.

"Blair, it's John. We're on our way back, so you don't have to worry about the cat tonight."

"Okay, sure. How, um, did it go?"

A short pause that did not conceal that things had gone horribly. "It was a bomb, Blair. Nobody's taken 'credit' yet, but it was deliberate."

Sandburg looked at Jim, his eyes wide. "Wow. Tell Rodney I'm sorry, okay?"

"Yeah, thanks. He didn't build it, just inspected it, but.... This is just.... Damn. I gotta run. " The other end clicked off, and Sandburg shut the phone.

After another half block, Sandburg said, "You know, I think their day was worse than ours. If that helps."

"Today wasn't 'bad'," Jim said with as much mocking cheerfulness as he could muster. "It was educational."

Sandburg laughed. "Asshole."

"Really, Chief? That's what I was going for."

They stopped on the way back to the station to shower and change. Jim was convinced that he could tough it out the rest of the day--hey, the worst was over, right? And he'd done fine--but Sandburg put his foot down. When they finally got back to Major Crimes there were two messages in his voicemail. One was from the homicide guy, who'd found twenty thousand dollars in the trunk of the dead guy's car (no explanation yet, but dollars to donuts murder wasn't the only crime at play) and the other was from Stephen.

"Hi, Jim, I'm sorry to bother you at work, but I'm trying to get in touch with Rodney McKay, but he's not at the University and the department won't give out his private information."

He passed it along to Sandburg, who called Stephen back and explained that McKay was out of town dealing with the mess in California and should probably be left alone for a few days. This led to a lot of very pointed and odd questions from Stephen, until Jim went and retrieved Sandburg's sandwich from the breakroom. He returned just as they were ringing off.

"What was that all about?" Jim asked, handing over half the sandwich and taking a bite out of the part he'd kept.

"I think they got to talking about rides and things at the party. Stephen's company manages family entertainment things. Facilities. They're cleaning up the racetrack here in town, making it snazzy and more, ah, 'G' rated, I think. Then there's the little amusement park right next door. That's next. He may be looking to hire an engineering consultant."

"Oh." Jim thought about his brother hiring a sentinel, just like any other business contact. Huh. "So what's the deal with McKay anyway?"

"The sentinel thing or the engineering thing?"

"The engineering thing. What does he do besides inspect bridges?"

Sandburg chewed his sandwich thoughtfully. "Well, according to rumor, if you want to build, well, pretty much anything, you show him the design and he tells you how to do it more simply, twice as strong, and usually for about a third off the cost. He really is a genius." Sandburg lowered his voice. "The problem is, his original stuff is apparently just ugly. Really ugly. Frighteningly ugly. His taste pretty much doesn't match anybody else's taste on the planet. So he's stuck inspecting bridges and making other people's designs work."

"Ouch," Jim said.

"He's bitter. From what I hear, he takes it out on his graduate students."

"They let him teach?" The academic life made absolutely no sense at all.

"The students fight each other like rabid animals to make it into his seminars."

Jim's phone rang again. "Ellison," he said.

"Detective, I apologize for bothering you." It was Fraser. He sounded unusually formal, even for him. "This is Constable Fraser." Jim already knew that. "We've made an arrest, and it seems we will need some help transporting the prisoners and the evidence. We were unable to make clear to police dispatch the nature of our problem."

"You've made an arrest?" Jim repeated. He didn't usually get lost so early in a conversation unless it was Sandburg talking about guide theory. "In the smuggling case? I just left you four hours ago--"

"No, this is another matter. We--that is, my partners and I--stumbled across a counterfeiting ring. I'm afraid there is no way to transport nine people in the Rivera, and the evidence--"

"You caught nine counterfeiters?"

"No, we caught six. But there is also the three of us. And Diefenbaker, of course--"

"Right. Hold it. Wait." Jim stopped, thinking hard, coming up with nothing. "What's your location? We'll be right there."

Jim ordered up a black and white for good measure, but he didn't want to cause too big a fuss until he'd had a look at the scene. The address was for a shabby old garage in the warehouse district. Sandburg's only was comment was, "Hey, I used to live around there," but Jim decided to pretend he was kidding. When they found the Mountie and his entourage, they did, in fact, have six prisoners.

Diefenbaker trotted up happily, nosing their pockets to make sure neither Jim nor Blair were packing donuts or anything similarly delightful. Jim patted him absently and looked over the surly group of bound prisoners. He decided to ignore Vecchio and Kowalski, who were both soaked head to toe in mud. Some things only got weirder if you paid attention to them, and since two uniforms were right behind them, Jim wanted to keep things as normal as possible. "Counterfeiting is a federal crime," he pointed out casually, making a stab at that 'normal as possible' thing. "You could have called treasury."

"Well, yes," Fraser said patiently. "Counterfeiting currency is, in fact, a federal offense. However, I believe these men have only committed an offense against the State of Washington."

"Washington doesn't print any money," Sandburg said, walking right into it, whatever it was.

Scraping thick mud off of his very expensive (and completely unsalvageable) shoes, Ray Vecchio yelled, "Lottery tickets, okay? They were counterfeiting lottery tickets!"

Jim raised his brows slightly. "Ben?" he asked. "Lottery tickets?" He looked at the muddy Rays, the bound men, and was kind of stunned at the size of the fuss.

"Essentially, yes. Lottery tickets. It is clearly a case of conspiracy to commit fraud. Possibly also receiving stolen property, since there is some evidence to indicate that they did not come by the equipment honestly."

One of the uniforms laughed. Jim managed a vague nod. "Where is the evidence?"

"The printing equipment is in the building. The tickets are there. You may," he added, "want to call for a tow truck in order to bring it in." He pointed to a bland, grey paneled truck.

Jim took a step toward it, stumbled back. "How many fake tickets are we talking about?"

"Well, it hasn't been possible to do a close count," Fraser hedged.

"Guess," Jim suggested.

"Well, roughly...."

"Yes, roughly will do."

"About two hundred and fifty thousand."

"Oh," Jim said.

The uniforms stared in open astonishment. Blair clapped both hands over his mouth and snorted. Jim opened his cell and called Simon.

***

If Wednesday set new records for weird, Thursday set new records for dull. Nothing interesting happened, nothing useful got done. It wasn't that they didn't try. They did try. Jim visited crime scenes for other detectives (every single one was just what it looked like, no hidden clues, no big mysteries, no car chases, even), interviewed (and re-interviewed) witnesses in a few of his ongoing cases (no one was lying, no one remembered a surprise bit of key evidence, no one broke down and confessed, weeping with shame), and went to a couple of meetings (at which absolutely nothing happened also).

The high point of the day was when Joel cornered Jim and Blair in the stairwell as they were trying to leave and quizzed them about which restaurants in town were popular with sentinels. This didn't qualify as 'interesting' so much as 'frustrating and pathetic,' since every suggestion they made, Joel found a reason to reject. He had a date on Friday night, and he was a little tense.

Friday morning, they didn't try to do much of anything, which was fine with Blair. Just thinking about the afternoon's delivery was making him nervous. They went to the gym to practice 'self defense,' which mostly meant Jim tossed him around. It was challenging, but didn't make the time pass any faster.

They inspected the truckload from the Customs warehouse. Jim examined a total of five items before being felled by a sneezing fit that lasted--Blair timed it--ten complete minutes. Fraser, of course, was very apologetic. Blair sat his partner down on the curb and crouched behind him, rubbing his back and trying to keep him calm. When it was over he collected the heap of used tissues at Jim's feet and handed him a bottle of water from the backpack.

While Jim pulled himself together, Ben and the Rays quarreled over how the next stage was going to go down. Ben and Ray Kowalski wanted Ben to follow their contact when he left; they weren't satisfied with how quickly things were moving, and they wanted to build up a profile of their contact. Ray Vecchio said they were rushing things; Ray K had no patience and Ben had no sense of self-preservation, and they would get further just building trust with the suspects.

Eventually, a compromise was reached: Jim and Kowalski would make contact, Blair and Vecchio would be the visible flunkies guarding the truck, and Fraser, looking nearly inconspicuous in old jeans, a ratty sweater, and a jags baseball cap, would wander around the marina gathering what information might be available.

Blair hoped it was a good plan.

Of course, the opposing side had plans of their own. While Blair and Ray were lounging beside the truck trying to look both casual and menacing, a cheerful young Asian man--he might easily have been one of the psych students Blair had been tutoring the previous year--trotted up and handed them a map and a set of boat keys. He told them to load the cargo onto a small power boat.

Fuck.

Even while Blair was wondering what to do, the fancy yacht Jim and Kowalski had boarded to conduct business was casting off. Looking unflappable, Vecchio waved the courier off, took the keys from Blair, and went to inspect the small boat. Right. They were too far in to hesitate now.

Toenails scratching the concrete causeway, Diefenbaker skidded to a halt, cutting Vecchio off from the boat and growling. Vecchio staggered as though struck and spun around, scrambling to unload the truck. "Move it," he snapped, "Get moving."

Obediently, Blair picked up a box. "What's wrong?"

Vecchio plunked another box on top of the one Blair was carrying, staggering him. "Hurry, go. My partner's on that boat--he's stowed away with them," he hissed.

He wasn't talking about Kowalski, but Blair didn't see how Fraser could have gotten on that yacht. "What? You can't know that."

"Dief knows that. Move it."

In record time they loaded the boat, stuffing their contraband cargo under the tarp the perps had generously left for them. While Vecchio figured out how to cast off, Blair pulled out his cell and called Simon, making his report even as they pulled out of the slip.

***

It took a couple of hours to get to open sea, and even then, for a long time the yacht moved north along the coast. Not so bad, all in all, except for the plan going to hell. As the sun began to dip noticeably westward, the shoreline sank into a thin, grey line and the small islands became fewer and further between. Jim, standing casually at the railing, carefully slowed his breathing. Everything was fine. The ocean was calm and nearly flat.

Kowalski leaned in and whispered--very softly, although it would be hard to get much use from a listening device out in all this open air--"Are you going to be all right? Without Blair for however long?"

Hell, he hadn't even thought of that. He'd been thinking about the operation and the water, thinking like it was the old days when he hadn't been a sentinel, because all of this had seemed so normal--

He'd thought he had the sentinel thing worked out, maybe. But no. Sweat was coming up on his palms. Jim turned his back to the water, dragged his attention to the boat, the deck under his feet, the rumble of the engine, the creak of struts. Ignore the water. Ignore the fact that he was a sentinel, vulnerable and easily out of control and no way to get to Sandburg for help. His hands tightened on the rail behind him. Rough and hard under his palm.

At least this time when the caribou appeared there was no uncertainty about it being incorporeal. Jim gulped a breath, tried to look casual, muttered, "Fraser's here."

Kowalski jumped and looked around. "Where?"

"I'm not sure. Here on the boat--" He stopped. Tommy Wu, their 'host', was on his way over.

He strolled up, smelling a little wary but not of lies. He looked Jim up and down. "Not seasick, I hope?"

Jim managed a smile, just a little feral. Let Wu believe what he liked. "Not very. We've got a nice day for it."

"You haven't seen your cabins yet. I think you'll be pleased with the facilities. I regret that this little voyage is an inconvenience, but I hope it won't be an unpleasant one."

He led them toward the hatch. Going below deck, they wouldn't be able to see just where the yacht was going--not that it would make any difference, isolated as they were. Going for casual and unimpressed--or, at least, just impressed enough to sound polite--Jim said, "A pleasant little sail hardly counts as an inconvenience."

Kowalski--bless him--playing his part a little more crudely, added, "Not packing, though, that's an inconvenience."

Another smile, half-amused and half-polite: "We've arranged for you to have everything you'll need." He turned to Jim as he opened the hatch and held it politely, "So, I was surprised that a poacher like yourself would know Sun Tzu."

Behind them, Kowalski was looking around, trying to get the lay of the boat and maybe some kind of sign of Fraser. Jim played his part and moved closer to Wu, capturing his gaze. "You know him, and you're a smuggler."

Wu acknowledged the point with an incline of his head. "Ever read Miyamoto Musashi?"

Jim had, years ago, although since it was on Jack's list of sentinel classics he had bought a copy to read again. "The Five Ways of Strategy -- it's a favorite of mine -- ground, water, wind, fire and void."

"Very good!" Surprised and pleased. "Have you mastered them?"

"Not completely." Very carefully, Jim kept his attention on this one conversation, not letting himself dwell on the endless water that lay beyond the hull of the boat or the dangers of the assignment. "There is still a lot I haven't mastered about war."

"Well, to Sun Tzu, life was war. One was either in battle or training for it. Miyamoto believed that the way of the warrior is acceptance of death in the cause of duty."

"It's true up to a point, but we can't forget what Gandhi said, 'The true warrior does not die killing.'"

That got a laugh. "Gandhi! You don't seem like a man who'd practice nonviolence."

"Well, in life, I'm a pragmatist; in my heart, an idealist, but Patton himself once said, 'A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.'"

Wu considered that and gave back another Patton quotation: "'If a man does his best, what else is there?' That's very cowboy, but I actually approve." He leaned past Jim in the narrow passage and swiftly opened two doors. "Here are your rooms. Please let me know if we've left out any necessities." The rooms were claustrophobically small and decorated in cutely efficient, high-end 'ship's cabin.' Jim nodded politely to Wu and Kowalski and shut himself in the small room.

The bunk was narrow, but not the sort that folded in the wall, so Jim wouldn't spend the night worried that it would give under him. He sat down and covered his face with his hands, at last acknowledging his impulse to escape. A few minutes. He had a few minutes. No noise. Of course, he couldn't hear any listening devices, but the distant engine noise might be covering that. He breathed in and out, trying to find a way to accept the sea around them. He was below the waterline now. The shape of the boat around him was impossible to miss. The vibration of the engine in the hull. The pressure of the waves--

No. No, it wasn't that bad. It really wasn't. He was expecting it to be bad, because he had a thing about water and Blair wasn't here and there'd been no time to prepare. But they just weren't that far from land. The ocean here wasn't really very deep. The boat wasn't particularly small, and certainly not fragile. Jim was being a cop right now, goddamn it. He had to focus.

What was this going to do for the operation? Out here with no witnesses, there would be no nice photos of the exchange. No back-up to rush in and bust everyone if it went bad, either. On the other hand, Ng might make an appearance. A meet with the big boss would move things along nicely. Jim just had to make sure that nothing went wrong.

***

"So," Blair asked as they pulled out of the slip, "You good with boats?"

Vecchio snorted. "You're kidding, right? Hey, watch where we're going!"

Blair eased back on the throttle. They couldn't afford to hit something and sink the damn boat before they even got started. God. Jim.

No, no, don't panic yet, he told himself. The smugglers wanted this shipment or they wouldn't have gone to all this trouble. This might be a problem or it might just be a really inconvenient and scary delivery, but whatever, it wasn't time to panic yet. Besides, Jim and Ray had a secret weapon on that boat, and Fraser was pretty much a legend.

A legend whose guide thought he was losing it. God.

Vecchio pulled a thin nylon line from his pocket and clipped it to Diefenbaker's collar.

"Do you have to do that?" Blair asked, half-shouting over the motor. "I mean, he seems pretty smart."

Vecchio looked at him balefully. "Kid, this wolf is probably smarter than I am. Hell, he did my job for years and he might have been better at it. But when Fraser is MIA he stops being a team player, and if this wolf gets himself killed because he's not bothering to read my lips--tell you what, let's just not go there, okay?"

"Right," Blair said, trying to back off, though the boat really didn't have room for him to actually give him any space. "Leash: good. Swimming off to the rescue: bad. Got it."

They didn't talk for a long time after that, except to squabble, voices loud and flat as they competed with the engine noise, over the directions and compass. Vecchio was a city boy who had always relied on Fraser to handle complicated navigations that didn't involve street signs or freeways. Blair had used a map and compass plenty of times before, but never on the water, which changed everything.

As the sun began to set, Vecchio said, "Dark, soon."

Something twisted in Blair's gut. "Yeah," he said.

"Think we should slow down?"

Experimentally, Blair turned on the headlights and tried to gauge the reflection on the water. "Probably," he admitted reluctantly. They were safely out of the bay and into the 'open' water, but the coast here was interrupted by sandbars, small islands, and shallow reefs. If they hit something and cracked the hull or beached the boat it wasn't just Blair and Ray who were in trouble. Jim, Fraser, and the other Ray would be pretty screwed as well.

The dusk seemed to come on very fast. One moment, the setting sun was turning the wide sea to glittering fire, the next it was over, the sky casting only a dim grey light that was already fading. An illusion, he thought, doubting that the illusion would hold and morning would seem to come as quickly. Blair dropped their speed.

Vecchio, checking around the seats, produced a brown paper bag. "Hey, I think we got dinner," he said, and pulled out four pre-packaged "lunch" kits, a six pack of soda, and a bag of chips.

"Wow," Blair said. "How nutritionally complete."

Vecchio shrugged. "You don't want to fight for your share, Dief will take it."

***

Dinner was like an exercise in sentinel control. Blair cooked creatively, if a little on the healthy side, but the food was pretty good and not completely crazy. Wu took Jim and Ray to a very nicely appointed dining room and served them heron's eggs, bear paw soup, baked rock cod, sea cucumber, abalone....

Jim knew you could eat almost anything when pressed by necessity. He'd done it: monkey, guinea pig, grubs, cold and lumpy plantain soup. That had been fine.

But here, in this very polite, very posh dining room--

Using a fork and patterned china plates--

It was just surreal.

He'd never eaten sea cucumber and never wanted to. It was slimy and gritty and weirdly sweet. Surely, it couldn't taste like this to normal taste buds or it would be used as a form of torture. The heron's eggs tasted like fish. Bear paw soup was *gamey* and fatty and sat on his tongue like a sour oil slick.

Jim ate, looking bored. Or doing his best to look bored. Nothing unusual or impressive here. Really. Kowalski, bless him, chatted inanely, irritating their host just enough--Jim hoped--to keep the edge off his suspicion.

About halfway through the meal, two things happened. The first was the yacht cut engines and dropped anchor; apparently they had arrived at the rendezvous point. The second was Jim's sense of taste faded out entirely. It happened while Wu was serving crepes filled with some kind of exotic goat cheese and topped with wild mushrooms and a glistening, black caviar. No, it couldn't just be any black caviar. It had to be contraband caviar from some endangered Black Sea sturgeon. Jim had tasted caviar once as a child--and obviously it had been back when his senses had been on line, because he distinctly remembered the bite positively reeked against his tongue. He had fled the room because just spitting out the mess of salt and rotting fish hadn't been enough and Dad would have had a fit if Jimmy had thrown up on the carpet in front of company.

Jim wasn't a little boy anymore. He could eat enough to be polite. He could--

Then he found that yes, in fact, he could. The crepe, the goat cheese, the tiny black pearls of fish reproduction, all had no more taste than yesterday's chewing gum. "This is very good," Jim said, letting Wu see his genuine pleasure. "Where do you get it?"

Jim could concentrate on doing his job. Just like that. He ate, not caring what, while drawing Wu out. Jim admired how skillfully Wu managed to mix business and pleasure. He talked business (did Wu have any advice about refrigeration methods? Jim was thinking about moving into more perishable products....) and classical music.

As one of Wu's minions brought out dessert Jim thought he heard a boat approaching. He didn't say anything, though. Eventually Kowalski looked up and asked. "Expecting company?"

Wu smiled tightly. "Actually, no. If you gentlemen will excuse me--? Please, continue. I'm sure this will only take a few minutes."

In his wake, Jim and Kowalski looked at their poached pears with raspberry sauce and wondered what the hell to do. The unexpected was *never* good when you were undercover. On the other hand, even if they could afford to back out now, there was nowhere to run to. Kowalski scrubbed a sweaty hand along his leg. "Just be cool," he whispered. "Everything's fine."

Jim nodded, took a bite of pear. "How can you eat?" Kowalski squeaked.

"Turns out my taste has an off switch."

"Oh. That's handy." Kowalski pointed at his ear, then the room.

Jim was already pretty sure, but he listened again. No bugs. "We're clear," he said. It was probably the only thing Brackett had taught him; well, the only useful thing, but Jim's stomach didn't twist so much this time when he thought about that--listening for electronics.

Even assured they were private, Kowalski leaned closer and whispered, "How are we doing?"

"Well, we're not dead yet."

The sound of footsteps in the hall made Jim draw back. He popped a bite of soft fruit in his mouth and opened up his body language, projecting confidence and unconcern.

Wu returned with Ho Ng. Wu introduced him as "my associate, Mr. Wang," but Jim had seen the pictures, and underneath his pleasant smile was a surge of adrenalin. If Ng was here when the contraband arrived--but, no, damn. The intention had never been to close the trap with this shipment. Simon had set up an undercover crew with cameras at the marina. They'd been sure Ng wouldn't show for a while yet. Blair and Simon might have called in the Coast Guard, but according to the plan, back-up was to keep its distance. Under the circumstances, Jim wasn't even sure if they could get compromising pictures of Wu and Ng out here.

A steward brought out another serving of dessert for the additional guest. Dinner continued to be very civilized. The conversation turned to sailing and weather and boat construction. Jim cheerfully admitted to knowing nothing about steel-hull versus wood-hull cruisers, and he tried not to think about how much an undercover evening with organized crime resembled a dinner party with his father's business partners.

***

In the dark there wasn't anything to do but look down at the compass or up at the stars. Vecchio was taking a turn driving the boat. Dief had settled down at Blair's feet for a nap. His body was nicely warm, but he pinned Blair's feet firmly in place. The air was cool and sweet. Sometimes, in the distance, they passed the lights of other boats.

"You might as well try to get some sleep," Vecchio said, his voice raised over the noise of the engine. "I won't be able to drive all night."

Blair was pretty sure he hadn't misheard that. "How could I possibly sleep?"

Vecchio shrugged. Like it was no big deal. Like this was just an ordinary day on the job.

Blair wrapped his arms around his chest to hoard his warmth and closed his eyes. He wouldn't sleep, but he'd learned the meditation for rest without sleeping when he was ten. That would have to do.

***

Jim listened at the door as Wu returned back along the passage after walking them to their cabins. As soon as Jim heard the outer hatch close, he slipped out and into the room next door. Kowalski was practically dancing on his toes, but he waited until Jim had swept around the room, listening for bugs and paying attention to the tiny hairs on his arms (weak electromagnetic fields left a static charge he could usually notice). Jim nodded, and Kowalski exploded into a quiet tirade that began, "Was that dinner whacked or *what*? Was that some kind of test, or is that guy just crazy? And if he's crazy, how crazy is he? I mean, what the hell? Is there any sign of Fraser? My god, are you sure he's here?"

"No, I don't know where he is," Jim said, since the tirade had paused, presumably so Jim could respond. "What worries me is, what is he going to do tomorrow morning when Sandburg and Vecchio show up with the goods and presumably sail away? With us. Back to Cascade."

"Crap," Kowalski hissed. "Crapola, crap, crap!"

The quick footfalls in the hall were nearly silent, and Jim had only a second's warning before the door blinked open and closed, depositing Benton Fraser into the tiny, crowded cabin. "We have to get out of here," he said without preamble. "Ng knows everything."

Kowalski, only momentarily put off by the sudden arrival, protested, "How could they?" He turned to Jim, "Even if they overheard something, they couldn't know--everything."

"Ng knew who we were when he arrived," Fraser said, seizing Kowalski by the wrist. "We are outnumbered. They are armed." He turned to the door, which opened--

Ho Ng and Tommy Wu were standing on the other side.

Fraser rushed the door. He was fast and competent. Ng was faster and better. He caught Fraser easily and slammed him sideways into the door frame. The decorative wood made a cracking sound.

Kowalski was between Jim and the door, which Fraser was blocking anyway. They could only watch as Fraser's arm flashed out, deflecting Ng's hand and the small knife it held. With his free hand, Ng pulled Fraser off balance. Sweeping his leg, Ng dumped him hard onto the floor. Jim started forward, glancing down so he wouldn't tangle his feet in Fraser's motionless body. When he looked up, Wu was holding a gun.

In such close, confined quarters, it wasn't like Wu could miss, even if he was a bad shot, which Jim suspected he wasn't. Jim swallowed dryly. "Something you wanted to talk about?"

Wu's eyes glittered angrily. "Get your friend up. Move it."

For just a moment, Jim considered playing innocent. But it wasn't paranoia he saw in their eyes, it was utter certainty.

"Come on," Kowalski said. "You had us checked out."

"Oh, yes," Ng said. "You had references. Keith Roark. A government informant." His eyes flicked over Jim knowingly. "A well trained sentinel can smell lies. But then you'd know that." Jim didn't think he'd ever been spotted before, or at least, not by any other clue than the guide that followed him around. He wondered what the tell was.

Kowalski had to half-carry Fraser though the passage and down a narrow flight of stairs into the hold. He'd been hit hard, but not, Jim thought, in the head. He was barely conscious and unable to support his own weight, which would have been bad even if Jim had known *why*.

They were tied. Though his hands were behind him, Jim thought he recognized the knots. Competent and tight, but not painfully so; Tommy Wu was still a polite host. As soon as they were all secure--even Fraser, still silent and pale--they were left alone. No bluster and no threats, no sullen henchman kicking them on the way out for fun. Wu ran a classy operation. Jim almost laughed out loud.

The hold was dark, only a sliver of light coming in from the hatch above. It was enough that Jim could see fairly well after his eyes adjusted. Forcing himself to be calm and methodical, Jim slowly surveyed the room, looking for something to facilitate their escape.

Some tools were piled on the port side. They didn't look very sharp. You couldn't cut ropes with a hammer. Block and tackle. Heavy, but probably useless. Rope, but they already had too much of that. Ha. He might have zoned, he was so absorbed in peering into the dark corners. It was a soft sigh from Kowalski that brought him back just in time to see the fed strip the ropes from his hands and sit up to start on his feet.

Jim said nothing. Ho Ng was a sentinel. Probably better trained than Jim and certainly more experienced. It was a bit of information his file had never mentioned; so the fact they knew it meant that Ng couldn't afford to let them live.

What Jim didn't know was how good he might be, what the range of his hearing was, or if he could compensate for the sound and vibration of the ocean enough to hear into the hold.

No wonder Wu hadn't bothered to bug anything.

Completely free, Kowalski carefully moved over to check on Fraser, then, with a sigh, whispered, "Make a noise so I can find you."

He'd taken a tiny pocket knife from Fraser's sock, and the bonds holding Jim's hands behind him gave in about fifteen seconds. Jim sat up and took the knife so he could work on his ankles. It would be easier for him, since he could see. "How badly is Ben hurt?" he whispered.

"I dunno," Kowalski answered. "Ng really twisted that leg, and it was kind of messed up to begin with, you know?"

Jim picked his way across the floor and made it to Fraser before Kowalski. He searched first for a head injury, running his fingers lightly along the scalp looking for swelling or heat. Nothing. Fraser shifted under his hands, conscious but not really present, his breath stuttering in what Jim thought might be a ragged attempt at pain control.

On his knees beside them, Kowalski cut his partner free and took his hand. "Hey," he said softly, "Frase. Hows about you wake up now?"

"Has this happened before?" Jim asked, wishing he knew more about sentinels.

"No," Kowalski answered. "Yes. But not nearly this bad. Not like this. But a couple of times, you know, just in these last few months. He's had a hard time with pain, you know?"

Jim didn't. "Having a hard time with pain" could mean a lot of different things to sentinels. Rodney McKay, for example, went into shock and tried to die when faced with severe pain. Jim, on the other hand, could usually make the pain of a pulled muscle or minor injury disappear completely if Sandburg talked him through a visualization--except those few times when absolutely nothing worked to dim the throbbing. "What does Vecchio do? When he's hurt?"

"Um. He counts."

"Okay, he counts...?" Jim repeated, trying to get more information.

"Backwards from six. Over and over. I don't know why."

Oh. Jim probably did. The counting was probably a cue for a breathing pattern. It wasn't one Jim had ever used, but Blair had only tried to teach him the simplest. He wished he knew more about it, now.

He did know a little about pain. Sandburg had drilled him on the pressure points he could find on himself and shown him the ones that had to be done by someone else. While Kowalski counted, Jim found the nerve clusters in Fraser's hand, his inner arm, behind the left ear.

None of it seemed to help. Kowalski, Fraser's head cushioned in his lap, counted resolutely backward from six, stopping every once in a while to protest that he wasn't the guide and didn't know what the hell he was doing and beg his friend to focus and come back. Even over the counting, Jim could hear Fraser's heart beat; it wasn't as loud as it should be, and it was fast and irregular. Damn, this wasn't right, but Jim didn't know what was wrong. How badly had Fraser been hurt and why couldn't he cope with it? Nothing Jim had seen--or felt or smelled--indicated internal bleeding or allergic reaction or... what was left? What else went wrong with sentinels?

Fraser's heart rate dropped suddenly. So did his breathing. This was sort of familiar. The goal of the harder breathing patterns (like the goal of the more concrete visualizations) was to enter an altered state to escape pain that couldn't be controlled or coped with or blocked out. Fraser was retreating. From the rumors Jim had heard, Fraser probably knew more about this stuff than Sandburg. Certainly a hell of a lot more than Jim himself knew.

The injury just wasn't that serious. The leg was a little swollen, a pulled muscle at most. No blood. No broken bones. No head trauma. Pain, yes, the hold stank of it, but--

"Is this good?" Kowalski asked suddenly. "I don't think he's conscious any more. This is not good."

They couldn't escape, not carrying Fraser completely non-responsive. Especially since Kowalski couldn't swim. Blair and the other Ray were coming. They'd walk right into Ng's trap. Maybe see Jim and Kowalski waving from the deck (and not see the guy with the gun behind them). They'd hand over the goods and then, all of them tied to an anchor and dropped overboard.

"I can't find his pulse. Oh, my god--"

Jim caught Kowalski's flailing hand. "His heart's slowed down. He's trancing."

That seemed to confuse Kowalski. "No. He doesn't have any toad venom."

"What?"

"There's a chemical he uses to put himself under. But this is not that because he used all he had while we were trapping Van Zandt."

Toad? Jim thought helplessly. Sandburg had never mentioned anything about toads. But even if he knew about it, why would he teach it to Jim? Jim was barely past the most basic lessons. God, he didn't know nearly enough, about anything. He had nothing to work with here. Nothing.

Fraser didn't smell like pain anymore. He didn't smell like very much at all. That couldn't be good, but Jim didn't say so out loud. Kowalski had already covered that part of things. Jim reached out with his hand, knowing that he couldn't *touch* Ben, not really, not with his flesh, but he didn't know how else to search for him, or with what else he could call him back. "Where the hell are you," he whispered. "Where did you go?"

Hey, Fraser's dreams were blue, too, which maybe meant that Jim was more normal than he'd guessed. Jim tilted his head back and looked up toward the sky, or, specifically, toward the leaves that blocked the sky. Blue, and a wild place, but not the jungle. There was nothing tropical here. The trees were old growth evergreens, the leaves sharp, short pine needles, the ground soft beneath his feet and mostly clear of plants. The far north, probably, although Jim had never been much past the Canadian border.

Fraser shouldn't be hard to find. After all, it was his dream. Jim looked around and found him very quickly, a shuddering, blood-covered body lying at the bottom of a shallow ravine. Except it wasn't Benton Fraser of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that he found. It was a wounded caribou. Blood matted its fur and flies landed to feed.

Jim looked down at himself, half-expecting to find himself a large cat or maybe dressed in nothing but cut-offs and face paint, but no, he was wearing a suit, just like he was dressed to testify in court. Huh.

His black dress shoes slipped and slid as Jim climbed down the ravine, mostly slinging himself from tree to tree so he wouldn't fall. It didn't take him long to reach the bottom.

The caribou watched him but made no attempt to rise or flee. It wasn't a small animal. Jim glanced at its antlers, its hard, sharp feet and slowly knelt at its back so he wouldn't be a handy target if the animal panicked and struck out. He could see now that most of the blood was from a rear leg. Multiple wounds. Bullet wounds, Jim had seen too many of those without these two more. A tear that might be a knife. Jim chased away the flies and laid his hand against the lower leg. It was hot, even through the insulating fur. Jim sighed. "Ben?"

The caribou huffed softly. Jim looked at the blood and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do. He'd wanted to talk to Fraser, but what kind of conversation could he have with the animal who had appeared in the place of his friend? What did that leave? Jim took off his tie and suit coat. It ought to be easy, in a dream, to rip his coat into strips, but it wasn't. He did get several large, uneven chunks, torn along the seams. He folded them into pads and bound them into place with his tie, making the wrapping tight enough to put some pressure on the wounds.

When the leg was taken care of, Jim moved to check the rest of the animal. A small, shallow cut on the chest was bleeding steadily, the blood streaming down to pool and sink in to the dirt. Fuck. This was--This was just--

Jim tore his gaze away from the torn fur and focused on a small plant pushing out of the soil near his left hand. The plant was terribly familiar and completely out of place, since it belonged in the jungles of Peru, not the pine forests of Canada.

Apparently, Jim had brought his own help with him. He remembered this plant in Incacha's hands. It was something he could use. It did nothing for pain, but it would speed clotting and help ward off infection. Jim stripped three of the leaves with his cleanest fingers and popped them into his mouth, chewing with his front teeth. The sharp astringent taste surprised him, reminding him to wonder if the leaves were real. They were as real as Fraser's injuries, but would a hallucinated Chopec cure do anything for a hallucinated Canadian injury?

Jim took the lump of gooey slivers out of his mouth and packed it into the shallow wound. The caribou grunted and tried to pull away. Jim put what he hoped was a quieting hand on its neck. "Ben?" But the animal only shuddered and panted strangely.

Jim wiped his bloody hands on his pants and began to search for other injuries. He found the next one on the back, going straight in as though the caribou had been shot directly from above. Or no, this was Fraser's wound, not an animal's. He had been shot from behind. It was bad, a small wound, but inflamed and bleeding heavily. "The bullet is still in." Fraser's voice.

Jim pretended not to notice the change. The body was still furred. Jim put another of the bitter leaves in his mouth and chewed. This one was worse than the others. It was leaking more than blood. "What happened?"

"Ray,,, wasn't shooting at me."

Intuition or magic or just wrong guess, but Jim was sure this 'Ray' was Vecchio not Kowalski. He spit the pulp into one hand and started chewing on another leaf while packing green mess into the open wound. "Who was he shooting at?"

"Her."

It wasn't fur around the wound now, but smooth flesh, pink and human. Jim looked up. The animal was gone and Fraser was lying naked on the ground, the remains of one of Jim's best suits tied around his leg in makeshift bandages. He was on his side, lying as the caribou had been. His eyes were closed and his color was terrible. "Ben. It's Jim. Can you tell me what's happening here?"

"Here? Here isn't real."

"I know that. I know. I think I followed you here. Ben, we need to wake up. We have a problem."

Fraser didn't answer.

"Tell me why we're here," Jim said around a mouthful of leaves. He felt a stab of sympathy for Sandburg, who had been living for months with Jim's multiple, simultaneous emergencies, unsure just how bad 'bad' was, guessing at what was happening, asking questions Jim couldn't answer. Jim wondered if he should pray or something, because he didn't have a clue. "Easy, Ben. It's all right."

"It's my fault. I don't know what to do anymore."

"Well. That happens to everybody sometimes." That had to be the right answer, because it was true.

"I'm not sure I ever did. I think maybe I've been lying to myself when I thought I did."

Jim packed another wad of leaves into the bullet wound. It was still streaming blood, and Jim pushed his hand against it, trying to stop the flow with direct pressure.

"They tried to teach me not to need anyone. You can't expect other people to meet your needs. It's not fair, and it's not possible."

"Well," Jim said helplessly, "other people can't meet all of your needs." He was reminded--and this was not a good time--about his own anxieties about depending too heavily on Sandburg.

"They leave," Ben whispered, not really answering. "It's not their fault. It's not even wrong. People have their own destinies, their own needs. They die." He shuddered weakly. "They move on."

So... what? "The people you're with now can't meet all your needs forever so you might as well give up?"

"I wasn't supposed to need anyone at all. I wasn't supposed to be that weak."

Jim felt a little sick. He could understand this. "But you do. And they leave you." Jim pushed harder against the tide of blood that dripped out under his hand. "Or they fail. Ray shot you."

"It wasn't his fault. He did everything he could. Much more than I deserved. I failed him. I think probably I'm always going to."

"Ben. Ray is coming. With Blair. They don't know what kind of trap they're coming into. We have to--" he stopped. "That happens. You fail sometimes. Everybody does. But let's not fail this time." They die. They move on. "Ray and Blair won't leave this time." Ben closed his eyes. Jim pushed, not knowing what else to do. "They aren't going to fail us." Nothing. "I need you."

Fraser shifted painfully against the ground. He was still bleeding. Nothing Jim had done was helping. Joining Fraser in this little nightmare wasn't helping, finding out the problem wasn't helping, treating the visible injury wasn't helping. Jim was here and there was no one else, and he should do something. Whatever the right thing was, he hadn't guessed it yet. Clearly. The poor bandages Jim had made were soaked and red. Jim's left hand, cramping from how hard he was pushing, was hot and sticky. "I can smell that they love you," Jim said. "Your guide. Your partner. Why isn't that enough?" Wasn't Jack's whole research resting on how that should be--well, if not enough, something. More than this. Something between Ben and this killing despair, this fear.

"It won't keep them here."

"Oh."

"It didn't keep my parents."

Jim tried to remember the wild stories he'd heard. The Mountie who'd come to Chicago on the trail of the men who'd killed his father. "They died."

"And then they left me."

"He'd been guiding you," Jim guessed.

Fraser laughed once. "I hope not. He was a terrible guide."

Right. Jim had heard that before somewhere. "So it's not about your senses."

Another weak laugh. "My senses. No. My senses are never any problem. Or not much of one. It's everything else that goes wrong."

What could Jim say to that? It was sort of true. Jim's senses weren't a big deal compared to the fact that his first guide had been sort of a psycho sadist. The senses had stayed the same, these last few months. It had been Jim who'd changed, and the people he'd met who'd made a difference. People were always the hardest part of any situation. "I hear you," and crap how pathetic was that? He was quoting Naomi now?

"Ho Ng... our intelligence never mentioned enhanced senses. Our plant in Tacoma couldn't have stood up to a sentinel interrogation. I'm not sure Ray could have, if it got that far. But he may have smelled it. If he was that good. I think he heard me on the boat."

At least he was thinking about the case now, and not just giving up and letting his life drain away. "Ben. We have to stop him. I don't know what time it is, but Blair and your guide can't be too far behind us."

Fraser leaned forward and pushed himself onto his knees. The wounds were still bleeding, although the ones Jim could see weren't bleeding as much as before. He was visibly shaking, but he didn't cry out at the pain. "We have to go back," he gasped.

"Hey," Jim said, reaching out. Fraser did not look like a man who should be getting up.

"We can't stay here." He got his bare feet under him, but made it only to his knees and listed to the side.

Jim caught Fraser's arm, supporting some of his weight. "I don't know how to get back."

Fraser attempted to collect himself. He was, Jim noticed, in uniform now. The red wool one. It was torn and bloody. "I've never done this alone," he admitted through clenched teeth. "Usually my father... well, no point in dwelling on that." He took a deep breath. "I believe it is an act of will."

"So we have to want to wake up," Jim said.

"Want to? No. We just have to do it."

Jim was sitting in the dark, his butt growing numb under him, his arms and shoulders a little cold. Startled, he pulled back and nearly lost his balance.

Kowalski didn't notice. He had Fraser cradled in his arms and was--possibly accidentally--restraining his attempt to sit up. "Frase? Fraser? What the hell!"

"Ray--"

"Look, nowhere in the contract does it say you can just randomly drop dead."

"Ray--"

"I am not good with that. I am not *down* with that."

"Ray. Ray."

"You don't get to do that. Christ, Fraser, I couldn't find your heartbeat!"

"Ray. I'm fine."

Kowalski froze. "Ben--?"

"I'm fine. I'm... sorry."

There was a short, painful silence. Jim looked down at his hands: dry and slightly dusty. Of course, there wouldn't be any blood. That hadn't been real.

"Jeez, Frase, what the hell was that?" There was no answer. Kowalski repeated the question.

"It doesn't matter." Fraser turned to Jim, speaking very softly. "Your range is probably much better than mine. What can you hear?"

Jim listened for a moment. "Nothing," he said. Open air and vast amounts of water did a real number on acoustics.

"Try again," Fraser said firmly. "You should be able to hear Ng."

Kowalski shook Fraser's shoulder. "What?" he asked, unable to follow the quiet conversation.

Fraser shook his head. "Sh. Listen, Jim."

Reluctantly, Jim closed his eyes. There was a lot to hear, and none of it made any sense. He listened to the spectrum of sound, trying to tease out the different vibrations into something meaningful. Voices. Rattles. The wave resonance of air on metal and wood. It was complicated and difficult, and Jim really didn't want to do that without Sandburg.

No choice. He had to do this. Fraser was there and Kowalski was there and they'd have to be enough to watch Jim's back and keep him from losing his focus and getting lost in the input because there was nothing else.

Sound blurred to noise and then seemed to recede to almost nothing. Damn.

Fraser lifted up Jim's left hand and ran light fingers over his pulse. "Try again," he said.

Jim gripped the offered hands hard and shifted his attention outward, listening. Voices, he wanted voices.

"--must get rid of these witnesses." Cold, hard.

"No." The voice of their former host, mild but resolute.

"Tommy, don't be stupid. If we don't kill them, they can identify us."

"As poachers, not as murderers."

"That will be enough to shut us down, Tommy."

"They were seen boarding my boat. When they never get off--"

"You'll say you put them ashore somewhere--"

"Lying," Jim breathed, "Ng. He's lying to Wu. Setting him up. For our murders."

Lips against his ear: "Sandburg?"

"Not yet," Jim answered, nodding.

Fraser slid away and stood up. He was stiff and limping, but completely silent as he went to the ladder and climbed up to the hatch. Jim heard the tiny click of the heavy metal door pushing against the bolt, then nothing. While Fraser came back down, Jim crept to the floor-level door they had entered through. It was also bolted from the outside. Kowalski started to help with the search, but in the dark hold he tripped on a coil of old rope. He appeared to realize that he was making way too much noise and sat down.

Jim was appreciative that, if he was going to be trapped in a dark hole with another sentinel it wasn't (for example) Adrian Monk, who would be screaming from claustrophobia by now.

Jim's hand, brailing a promising pile of empty crates and coiled wire, found something heavy and cold. He shifted it carefully. Not carefully enough, though. It tapped against the wall, making a soft clang. Jim froze, hoping this wasn't the sound that would give away their movements to Ng.

Silent as a breeze, Fraser glided over to him. His hands slid down Jim's arm to the metal bar and he shifted it again, more gently. The clang it produced was quiet, but resonant. Fraser did it again.

"Shh," Jim breathed.

Fraser took Jim's wrist and led him away from the promising pile and to the opposite wall. He rapped the wall here with his knuckles and then pressed Jim's palm flat to the surface. "What?" He didn't understand what Fraser was showing him.

"Too much space," Fraser whispered in his ear. "We have to--wait--I--here--"

Jim followed his hands, found the loose bolt Fraser was fussing with. While Jim opened up the wall, Fraser collected his partner.

Jim set the panel down with excruciating slowness and peered into the cavity behind. From the echo it made of Jim's own breathing, he could tell the space was small, but it was too dark for even him to see. Carefully, he reached out with his hand and tried to find the far wall. His fingers closed on a rung. A ladder. Jim's breath caught, but he didn't cheer aloud.

He didn't groan, either, a moment later when he heard a small boat closing on Wu's yacht.

***

Dawn. Red sunlight turned the water to fire but didn't do a damn thing for the cold. Shivering, Blair checked his watch again and redid the math in his head. They should be there soon. In five minutes. Or maybe in twenty. Unless they'd gone off course, in which case they were just so completely screwed.

Beside him, Ray squirmed away from the bright light, bumped into Blair's shoulder and snuffled awake. "Are we there yet?" he asked, rubbing his face.

Blair clenched his teeth and shook his head. Vecchio stretched, eliciting a vocal protest from Diefenbaker at his feet. "Yeah, yeah, stay on your own side."

"Do you think--" Blair started, breaking off as he saw a smudge on the horizon. "That look like an island to you?" Blair pushed up the speed, anxious to get closer.

It seemed to take forever. Vecchio pulled out a small brass telescope and scanned the water ahead. At Blair's surprised look, he snapped, "What? It's Fraser's." He sighed. "And because it's Fraser's, it's not nearly as strong as I'd like. I see two boats."

"The Island Commander?" Blair asked hopefully.

"I'm looking..."

Blair forced himself to take a deep calming breath.

"Yes. Thank you, God. That's them."

Blair slowed as they approached the large boats. He'd driven a truck one summer, and he was a decent hand with a rowboat, but he really didn't want to slam nose-first into the yacht because he didn't have a lot of experience with powerboats. That wouldn't make a good impression.

Jim's contact, Tommy Wu came forward and called, "Good morning!" as he held out a hand for the rope. He looked a little tense, Blair decided.

Two of the crew deftly pulled the small boat up against the bigger one and then hopped in to check the cargo. Blair and Vecchio stepped up onto the deck, Diefenbaker leaping after them.

Ho Ng nodded as the crewmen held up samples of pelts and leather. "A good shipment. Quality merchandise. But I wouldn't expect less from undercover police."

Vecchio started to reach for his gun. He froze mid-movement. Wu had already drawn on him. For a long moment, it was like a photograph or an image made out of crystal; no one moved, all the edges were sharp, and the air was clear and still. It only lasted for a moment, then at once, the crew reached for their weapons.

They were frozen again, this time by a soft growl. Everyone looked down. Diefenbaker was off the leash. He was right in front of Wu, muzzle wrinkled, wicked teeth next to his crotch. Wu started to move backwards. The growl came again and he froze.

Something small and heavy--a hook? A wrench?--sailed through the air and hit Wu's gun square-on, knocking it clear out of his hand and into the water off the prow. At once, Vecchio launched himself at the crewman standing next to him. Blair looked around, caught a glimpse of Jim--thank god--holding someone in a headlock, and realized belatedly that he ought to do something. Blair leaped at Wu, just barely managing not to trip over Dief in the process. It was a good tackle, and they both went down, but Wu was strong and fast. He caught Blair hard in a nerve junction and leaped away as Blair's world whited out in pain.

Gasping, Blair made it to his knees and forced himself to look around. For a moment, he thought it was over; the deck was littered with bodies, Jim and Kowalski were covering everyone still moving, and Vecchio was cuffing someone. "All right," Jim drawled. "Let's just settle down."

Ng stepped out of cover on the upper deck. He had a short machine gun slung over his shoulder and something squat in his hand. "I don't think so," he said. "If I trigger this, we all die. Get up here. Throw your weapons down." A grenade, Blair realized. He was playing with the half-pulled pin.

Jim hesitated for a moment, then smiled. "No, I don't think so."

Ng's arrogance faded just for a moment, his polished contempt giving way to uncontrolled anger. In that moment, something flashed between his fingers and the grenade. Blair panicked and froze, knowing he could never get to the grenade in time and also that they couldn't get away.

Then he realized that the pin had been broken off in Ng's hand.

Astonished, Blair looked up.

Benton Fraser was standing on the roof of the wheelhouse, his hand full of--small tools? Screwdrivers? He was still filthy and dressed like a wharf rat, but he practically glowed. He might as well have been wearing a dress uniform, he looked so sparkly and noble. Blair suddenly understood what Jim had meant about "living legend." If Blair told this story, nobody would believe it had really happened.

Jim took a step toward Ho Ng. "Put down the gun. Now." He waited until Ng had complied. "Sandburg, call Simon."

***

It had only taken ten minutes for the Coast Guard (and a man from Fish and Wildlife and Simon) to show up. They came in force, one large boat and three small ones, and suddenly the Island Commander was swarming with efficient men and women in uniform who looked at Blair and his companions like they were kids caught playing in empty refrigerators or something. Amateurs. Interlopers.

Fish out of water.

The Coast Guard re-searched and re-bound the prisoners while the fed inspected and photographed the cargo. Gathered together on the Island Commander's foredeck, Blair and the others waited for someone to come and take their statements.

Blair, tired and bored and a little cold, sniffed himself discretely. He needed a shower. Sure, he probably didn't smell worse than anybody around him, but still, there were two sentinels well within range. Blair shifted to stand downwind.

Jim sat down on the deck, his back to the rail. The Rays paced restlessly in opposite directions. Fraser sat down on an empty crate and wrapped his arms around Diefenbaker, who leaned against him and whined.

"Frase--" Ray Kowalski began.

The answer was brisk and immediate. "I'm fine, Ray. There's nothing to worry about."

"Like hell there's not! You were both unconscious for four hours. I couldn't find a goddamn pulse--"

Ray Vecchio spun around, closing on his partners. "What?"

"It was nothing to worry about, Ray. I pulled a muscle. I'm fine."

"Oh. Right. The fine where you're unconscious! Remind me what fine that is!" Vecchio was nearly dancing with rage.

*You were both unconscious for four hours.* Both of them. "Jim--"

"I'm all right, Chief."

"Unconscious?" Blair asked pointedly.

"Trancing."

Blair wasn't sure what was more surprising: that Jim had entered an altered state, or that he was so casual about admitting it.

Vecchio squatted in front of his partner and said softly, "We can't keep doing this, Benny. It's getting worse. Pain reactions aren't a game."

"Ray--"

"It's not about pain," Jim said.

Vecchio moved protectively between them. "What do you know about it?"

"I went with him."

Blair jumped up. "Right. Okay. We can't do this here."

It turned out that Blair had a talent for playing 'asshole guide.' He went to the captain of the biggest Coast Guard boat and demanded transportation. Two sentinels had been captured. One of them had been injured, both of them had been unconscious, you could not leave delicate resources sitting around in the sun with nothing to eat and no access to basic first aid supplies, and no, that first aid kit was not going to cut it for sentinels could we stop playing around now?

Simon, surprised and a little irritated, tried to get him to settle down. Blair didn't even break his rhythm. "Captain Banks, I don't tell you how to do your job, so I really think you should stay out of mine. I want a boat. I want it now." Maybe Simon understood that something was up, because he muttered colorfully about what a pain in the ass it was working with sentinels, and backed off.

One of the smaller boats was dispatched to take them back to Cascade. Blair wasn't sure that anyone was up to a repeat of the journey out, but the Coast Guard put them on a stubby utility boat that was a lot faster than the little one the smugglers had given Blair and Vecchio.

The boat had a tiny, covered cabin. It was the first time Blair had been out of the wind since the day before. Blair sat Jim on one of the ancient metal benches and stepped in close, so he was standing between his knees. "Bear with me," he murmured, laying a hand on Jim's shoulder. "We're modeling physical comfort." To his surprise, Jim didn't just tolerate the touch, he put an arm around Blair's waist and pulled him in closer.

"Look," Jim whispered, "If you're gonna chew me out--"

"Do you need chewing out?" Blair asked. He didn't feel like yelling, he really didn't.

"What I did was dangerous and I don't have the training." Jim's muscles had gone rigid, but he forced out the confession.

Blair rubbed a slow circle across Jim's shoulders. "What was it you did?" he asked.

The answer was so quiet he barely heard it. "I followed him into a blue dream. There were animals. An animal dream."

A Spirit dream. The mystical stuff Jim hated. No wonder he was unsure and torn up. "Jim, this isn't like eating preservatives or using Raid in the house. I can't--I don't have the right to make decisions about this. I can help you. I can encourage you--and okay, yes it scares the crap out of me to think about you messing with your consciousness without me there in case you get into trouble, but, Jim, your heart is your best guide here. Your own higher consciousness."

Jim laughed once, tightly. "Shit, Chief. Don't start with the 'higher consciousness' business. You'll be talking about auras next."

"Jim--" Blair paused, trying to think of a language that wouldn't completely creep Jim out. "You've got really good instincts about this sort of thing." Instinct was completely wrong, but he didn't need Jim using the correct terminology, he needed Jim to have confidence and comfort. "The only problem you've ever had is fighting yourself." Slowly, he knelt down in front of Jim so that they were face-to-face. "What was it you did? You went into Ben's dream? You followed his animal?"

"I don't know how I did it. Well, I know, I just can't--"

"Describe it?"

"Right. No." Jim glanced up, and Blair craned his neck to follow his gaze. Fraser was sitting on the far side of the cabin. He had Rays pressed against each side and Diefenbaker lying against his legs. "He's bleeding. No, not here, there. He's already lost--"

All right, yes, even though his one Anthro of Religion at Rainer hadn't prepared him for this, seventeen years with Naomi had. "What's he losing, Jim? His soul or just his strength?"

That got him a very, very shocked look.

Blair cleared his throat and tried again. "If I were to ask you if Ben was all there or if some parts of him were somewhere else, you would say...?"

"He's all there. He's just... sick. Inside."

"Okay. That's good." It was great. Blair didn't even want to think about what soul retrieval might entail. "What does he need?"

Jim gaped at him. "You're going to help me fix this."

"Well, I'm going to try."

"I was--Well, I was thinking up all these arguments about why I'm not just, you know, crazy."

Blair sighed, kind of hurt. "Oh. You can tell them to me if you want to." Although, really. Blair had made a lot of mistakes since they'd met, but assuming Jim was some kind of unreliable psycho wasn't one of them.

"They weren't very good."

"Fine. So tell me what Ben needs."

Across the little cabin, Ben abruptly stood up. "Thank you kindly for your concern," he said politely. "But I really don't need anything." He strode to the hatch and exited onto the deck.

Kowalski looked at them. He looked at the shutting door. "What the hell was that?" he asked.

***

The trip back to Cascade took three hours. They were three very quiet, uncomfortable hours. Jim, hungry and filthy, spent the trip wondering just what he should have done differently. He didn't know.

When they pulled up at the marina where they had left Jim's SUV and the unmarked Fish and Wildlife truck, they disembarked in grim silence. The only conversation was Fraser's formal and unembellished thanks to the crew.

The trip home was quiet, too. But at least that was only a tired quiet, not an embarrassed and worried quiet. At home, Sandburg shooed Jim off to the shower and threw together an omelet. They ate it on the couch watching late morning talk shows. They fell asleep there, too. When the phone rang, Jim woke up with his head on Sandburg's shoulder and the TV still on.

He reached for the phone, but he had to lean across Sandburg's body and--god, he was rank. Jim flinched back and Sandburg fumbled for the handset. The hello he managed was thick and slurred.

"All right, Sandburg. How about you tell me what the hell was going on this morning." It was Simon. He was so loud Jim could have heard him with normal ears.

A sigh. "I wish I could, Simon, but I have no idea."

"It's your job to have ideas."

"Something on that boat had two sentinels unconscious for several hours. Do you know how rare that is, for two sentinels to have identical, simultaneous reactions? We'd have to sweep the boat, and it would take weeks to test everything--"

"So why are you at home and not at the hospital?"

"He's not currently showing symptoms, so I'm not turning him over to a bunch of biomedical quacks in lab coats who can't do anything but test for chemicals that aren't in high enough concentrations to detect. This is my job, Simon. Jim is clean and he was sleeping."

Simon relented surprisingly quickly and allowed Sandburg to ring off. Jim looked at him with surprise. "Wow," he said. "I finally think you have this lying business down pat."

Blair cheerfully flipped him off. "That wasn't a lie. Every word was true."

"And completely misleading!"

"A little obfuscation never hurt anyone. Besides, would the truth have made him happy? Would he have learned anything useful if I'd said that you and Fraser had spent most of the night spiritwalking?"

Jim winced. That was a very good point. "Not to change the subject, Chief, but you really stink."

"So, what? First I'm a liar and now you're making personal comments?" He was grinning as he aggressively moved into Jim's personal space.

Jim laughed. A mistake, as it gave him a snootful of way overripe guide. "You're getting more disgusting by the second," Jim said, nearly gagging. "Go wash."

"Wow," Sandburg said, heading off to the shower. "I'm really feeling the warm fuzzies here, Jim. I'm really touched." His bitching and moaning continued after the door shut. Jim ignored it and went into the kitchen. He was looking for a beer and maybe a snack. Was there any left over anything?

It really had been a very bad day. Even worse than a bad day, it had started yesterday, after all. Jim checked the clock. It was after six. Dinnertime, then. Maybe they could order pizza.

The phone rang. Hoping it wasn't Simon again, Jim picked up.

It wasn't Simon. "Jim? I'm sorry, but I really think we need your help. I didn't know who else to call." Kowalski. He sounded frantic. In the background, Vecchio was speaking softly and intensely.

"What's happened?"

"Fraser just walked out of a meeting. He just got up and left. It was... it was rude. He's... he's walked to a park somewhere, and he won't talk to us--Ray doesn't know what to do. The wolf's upset--"

"Where are you?" Jim cut in.

A miserable laugh. "Seattle. We got cleaned up and took the truck back. We were in a meeting with the local Fish and Wildlife people. We... they were telling us what a good job we'd done. And he just got up and left. The sign says 'Freeway Park.' He's sick, isn't he?"

Jim was already on his way to the bathroom. He didn't knock, just pulled the towel off of Sandburg's head and held the phone to his ear. "Um, hello?" Sandburg said, giving Jim a curious look. His expression got very serious very quickly. "He's in the park now? All right. Stay there. If he'll drink, give him water. If he'll eat, give him something simple like crackers. Nothing with a lot of sugar. Don't make him talk.... No! Don't even think of calling an ambulance unless he has trouble breathing. Or if he asks you to.... No, we'll figure that out when we get there. Bye." He pushed the phone away, took one last swipe with the towel, and brushed past Jim with his hair still dripping. "Come on, let's go."

By the time Jim had put on his shoes and socks, Sandburg was waiting by the door holding his backpack.

***

The Saturday evening traffic was just getting started and the usual forty-five minute trip to Seattle took just over an hour. The park in question was on the map and not hard to find. There were a few parking spots. Jim didn't hesitate about choosing which one. "There," he said, pulling in. "Behind those trees."

The park was perfectly manicured; bright green grass, flowering bushes, artistic concrete walls here and there. Blair gritted his teeth. No doubt there was pesticide and fertilizer everywhere. This was no place for sentinels.

Fraser was wearing his dress uniform. He was seated on the perfect, green grass with his back to a small tree. Ray Vecchio was squatting in front of him and Ray Kowalski was sitting on a park bench, slumped forward, his head in his hands. As they got closer, they could hear that Vecchio was talking almost non-stop. "What, Benny, just tell me? Do you need to go home, is that it? I'll take you home. We can go get in the car right now and we won't stop until we hit tundra. Or we'll go find Eric, how about that? I'm not sure how, since he's sort of a fugitive, but maybe you know a medicine man who's not playing games with the law? It doesn't matter. Whatever you need to do, we'll find a way. Aw, hell, Benny, don't do this to me."

He didn't seem to notice their arrival until Jim leaned down and gently tugged him back and to the side. Vecchio let himself be led. He was clearly at the end of his rope. Blair didn't blame him. Ben looked like hell.

Blair squatted down, moving closer until Ben flinched slightly. This was a good sign; it meant that the problem wasn't a zone so bad that Ben was completely unaware of his environment. "Hi," he said. "It's Blair."

No answer.

"Ben, I'd like to touch you, but I won't if you tell me not to. Okay?" There was no answer to this either. Moving slowly, he lifted Ben's right hand and turned it over so he could lay the tips of his fingers along the inner wrist. No doubt Jim could have told him Ben's pulse rate, but Blair was also curious as to how Ben would respond to human contact. He didn't. The answer to the pulse question was fast. Very, very fast.

Blair looked up at Jim, who still had Vecchio loosely by the shoulders. Jim's eyes were closed and his head was cocked as though he was listening for something. "Jim?" he whispered. A little help here would be nice. A clue?

Jim shook his head. "I can't tell what's here and what's there. I don't think he's hurt here, in his body. I think all the bleeding is there, but--" Jim winced.

Okay. Well. Jim was half somewhere else. Hell. "Ben. Ben, I really want to get you off this grass. It can't be good. Why don't you let us take you to a hotel or to the beach or up into the mountains?"

"I was hoping, if I sat down, I could feel the ground," he answered, speaking for the first time. "I can't feel the ground. I can barely feel this tree."

Blair wondered what the hell that meant. He wondered what was wrong. Statistically it was probably some kind of sentinel problem. Benton Fraser, living legend and all that, but he traveled a lot, was under a lot of stress. If he'd developed a sensitivity to, say, a furniture polish commonly used in hotel rooms, well, there would have to be lifestyle changes. Or it might be clinical depression. Which would really suck, because the only antidepressant that wasn't completely contraindicated for sentinels (since the goal of treatment wasn't to make the patient either completely crazy or dead) tended to cause liver damage even in regular people. Or it might be some other undiagnosed illness.

Ray Kowalski got up off the bench and sat beside Fraser on the ground. "Frase, let's get you out of here," he urged gently.

"No, Ray. It doesn't matter."

Standing just behind Blair, holding on to Vecchio, Jim said, "You're his guide. You have to help him."

Vecchio lost it. "Help him? I can't help him! He's grieving." He shoved Jim away, although Jim was taller and had at least twenty pounds on him. "I can't make that go away. Don't you get it? I can't give him back what he's lost. I can't make his dad come back. I can't make it not hurt any more."

Fraser's head shot up. "Ray--" he began, horrified.

But Vecchio was still tangled up in Jim, who was leaning down into his face and shouting back, "You're his guide. He chose you because he trusts you--"

"You shut the hell up! I don't know anything about sentinels--"

"And he did that because he needs you. If you're so afraid of his pain that you can't face it with him, he's going to die."

The silence that followed was sudden and terrible. Even the birds were quiet. The cars on the freeway seemed strangely far away. Vecchio and Jim were staring at each other, panting. Fraser was on his feet, sort of, leaning heavily on Kowalski.

Vecchio sagged and closed his eyes. "What do I do, Benny? Tell me what to do."

"He can't ask you," Jim ground out. "He can't ask you. He's been too well trained not to ask, to pretend he doesn't need--" Jim suddenly let go of Vecchio and stepped back. He was shaking.

Shocked, confused, Blair looked at the men around him. Vecchio looked horrified and lost. Fraser just looked broken. Jim--Blair had no idea what to do about Jim.

It was Kowalski who figured out what had to happen next. Abruptly, he turned Fraser to face him and, still supporting his weight, whispered, "I won't leave you. This is the life I want. You are the partner I want. Whatever it takes." He broke off as he found himself struggling to keep Fraser upright. Before Blair could move, Vecchio had closed on him from the other side. Together, they managed to get Fraser as far as the bench Kowalski had been sitting on before.

"I'm sorry," Vecchio was murmuring. "He's right, Benny, I was scared. I was scared of screwing up. God help me, scared of screwing you up. I didn't know what to do. But that doesn't mean I didn't want to. My best friend. The best friend I've ever had."

"It's too much," Ben whispered. "I never should have asked. Being a guide is a terrible burden--"

"What's too much?" Vecchio asked, forcing Ben to look at him. "Cutting you a break once in a while is too much? Giving a shit is too much? Like hell it is, Benny. The best thing that ever happened to me was being your guide."

Gasping, struggling to contain himself, Ben began to cry. He wasn't very good at it. The ragged sobs seemed to almost choke him. "Yeah," Vecchio said. "Let it out. You never got to do this. It's all right."

"I c-can't--R-Ray--" Panic. Desperation. Blair had to look away.

"No. It's all right. Let it out, let it go. I'm right here. I'm not... I'm not afraid of you being upset."

Jim had stepped back. He was supporting himself by holding on to a flowering tree. Stumbling a little, Blair went to him. "Hey, man," he said, trying to sound normal. "How you doing?"

Jim didn't answer, except for a look that asked if Blair was crazy. Blair winced in apology, and went to stand next to him. Jim slipped an arm around his chest and pulled him closer. Blair could feel Jim shaking and had a brief spike of panic. Was this what happened when you let upset sentinels near each other? Was it contagious? You kept them away from each other when they were sick, you had to do that, but spiritual disturbances were dangerous too? But then Jim sighed and laid his cheek along the top of Blair's head. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

Blair wrapped his hands around Jim's encircling arm, the only part of his partner he could reach.

"I didn't.... I was no better, Chief. I'm sorry."

What the hell was he talking about? Blair opened his mouth to ask and shut it again. He was going to wait this time. He was going to give Jim space.

Over on the bench, both Rays were rubbing Ben's back and shoulders, coaxing him to breathe and relax.

"The thing I should have said. The thing I should have admitted to you," Jim whispered. "Months ago, maybe. I want to live. I want to live. I want it to be wonderful. I'm so scared--"

Blair spun around and wrapped his arms around Jim's waist. He wished he could find Jim's spirit world, he wished he could reassure him there, say that Jim was strong and Blair would help and everything would--well, not be all right, not all the time, but that it would be wonderful sometimes.

"I'm ready to give this sentinel thing a serious try, Chief. I want to."

It was starting to get dark before any of them made motions toward moving. Jim was first. He stretched restlessly and began to sit on the ground. Blair caught his hand and shook his head. He didn't even like the idea of the sentinels standing on this grass, he certainly wasn't going to let Jim get any closer to it.

Over on the bench, Vecchio pulled out a bottle of water and ordered Ben to drink. Diefenbaker got up from his spot on the ground and whined imperiously. Jim sighed and rubbed his face and stepped back from Blair, who dug out the hypoallergenic baby wipes and passed them around to anyone who might want to wipe their faces off. The spring evening was turning chilly. Blair wished he'd thought to bring a jacket.

"You all have had a really long day," Jim said. "Why don't you let Sandburg drive that green monster back to your hotel?"

Kowalski sighed. "Thanks, but we won't go back to Cascade tonight. We'll find a better park or go out of town and camp somewhere."

Blair blinked. "You just can't camp out somewhere." Well, you could, but not in the nice parts of town. "Even this early in the season, I'm not sure you could get a camping spot in one of the parks."

Vecchio smiled wryly. "We're still on the clock for Fish and Furry. Anybody hassles us, we show them our ID and say we're on stake-out."

Ben managed a weak protest. "Ray, that's hardly an appropriate use of our authority."

Kowalski laughed. "You're kidding, right? With our luck, we'll catch someone poaching or dumping toxic waste."

"Oh," Ben said. "That's a very good point."

Blair collected his partner and headed toward the car, the opposite direction of where Ben and the others were going. For right now, they were going home. They could deal with the world tomorrow.

***

Epilogue: Two days ago, in Arizona

The prisoner was crying. He'd cried all the way from Los Angeles, all of last night, and, after a break for a few hours' sleeping, all afternoon today. Stupid brat wouldn't have lasted a month in the army. Of course, Alex had only lasted a year in the army, so she wasn't one to talk.

There was no way to escape the sounds of hopeless weeping inside the cabin. Alex went outside into the fresh air in search of relief. She wondered how far down the gravel road she'd have to go not to hear him anymore. She wondered if going back inside and threatening him would shut him up. Both were idle daydreams. If she couldn't hear him and he escaped, or if she actually hurt him and he got sick, then all the effort of capturing him was wasted. There had been too much waste already. Months of planning, weeks of work, and the first attempt to bring a group out of the county had been foiled by some local police department. Then four more months lost in that really stupid bid to use indigenous subjects. This latest round of attempts had damn well better produce results. Her associates were getting impatient.

The pop of tires on gravel caught her attention and Alex looked around for cover, her hand on her gun. The trees here were thin and short, the bushes were too scrawny to provide either shelter or concealment. Before she could get too worried, a familiar voice laid itself over the sounds of the car: "Hi, honey, I'm home. And I brought you a present." Lee. Alex let go of her weapon.

Her associates had had high hopes that--besides what his skills could add to the project--Alex herself would be made more efficient by having a guide of her own to work with. Not in a million years. Lee was civil enough to leash his contempt for sentinels around Alex, and she wasn't actually worried he would try anything, not with her so well armed and so much money riding on this enterprise. But trust him? Obey him? Relax around him? Never.

The bland sedan parked in front of the cabin and Lee got out smiling. Alex didn't smile back. "You're late," she said.

"Yeah. Well, there was this funny thing. Some bridge came crashing down on the highway east of Santa Barbara. Backed up the traffic in all directions. Very inconvenient."

"If you're fishing for compliments," she said coolly, "fine. You were brilliant. The crash was magnificent. The timing was perfect. The position was fantastic. Blah, blah, blah."

"Hey, it took them almost a day to figure out it wasn't an accident." His heart wasn't in bragging, though. He walked around to the rear of the car. "I've got our package."

"Tell me you didn't stop to play with this one," she said. Lee had never admitted it, but taking time to have some fun was how they'd lost the whore in Las Vegas. His wrist was still in a cast.

"Nah. He's no fun. But you were right. He was a great target. Estranged from his family, self-employed, no real guide. He may not be missed for days." He unlocked the trunk and raised the lid to reveal a handsome young man in his late twenties holding a pair of handcuffs and trying to look charmingly chagrined.

"This isn't what it looks like," he said.

Alex drew her gun. "Mr. Spencer, you're valuable," she said. "But you're not irreplaceable. The moment you become more trouble than you're worth, I will shoot you and we'll go capture some other sentinel. All right?"

"What? No, wait. Sentinel? See, I'm not a sentinel. I'm a psychic."

Alex sighed as Lee hauled Spencer out of the car and dumped him on the ground.

"Ow. No, really. I'm not a--"

"Your scores are on file with Princeton Sensory Testing," Alex drawled.

Lee jerked Spencer's arms behind him and re-attached the cuffs. He casually hauled Spencer to his feet by his hair while asking Alex, "How did yours go?"

"Messy," she admitted. "His damned guide was there. I had to shoot him."

Lee widened his eyes in mock surprise. "No! you? Really?"

Alex sighed. "Oh, shut up."

"Hey, do I hear crying? I do." Alex wasn't surprised that Lee could hear it. Eppes was getting loud again. "You've got yourself a winner. Just wait. This one will be totally useless." He was hauling Spencer toward the cabin by his hair. The scent of pain was adding to the smell of unwashed and exhausted.

Alex wrinkled her nose and stepped upwind. "Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before."

"Eppes is a whitebread kid who still lives at home. The only guides he's ever had were his mommy and his big brother. He'll crack under the least bit of pressure."

All of that was true, but he had to see there was no point in arguing with Alex. She hadn't made the final decision. "His sensory scores are right down the middle of sentinel average. His intelligence is beyond exceptional. He hasn't had a hospitalization in fifteen years. And he doesn't have any skills he could use to escape."

"He consults for five separate federal agencies. They will look for him." At the short set of steps leading to the porch, Lee shoved Spencer forward so he fell going up and crashed to his knees.

"He has known enemies. We're being circumspect. And you'll like him. He's cooperative." Except for the crying, which was really getting on her nerves.

"Who's next? The mystery writer?"

"No," Alex said. She opened the front door for Brackett and the prisoner, then let them into the small back room that held the Plexiglas cages that would hold their guests for the next day or two until it was time to move. "She's too old. Besides, thirty years as a housewife and substitute English teacher, what kind of life is that for a sentinel?" She waited as Lee uncuffed Spencer and shoved him into the small, transparent box. The activity had drawn the attention of the occupant of the second box. Eppes didn't stop crying completely, but the sobs turned to disheartened sniffles. Alex had the sinking feeling she was going to regret shooting that guide all the way to South America. "I picked up the file on our next target on the way through. Come on."

In the outer room, she handed him the file of silky fax paper. "Last minute addition, a target of opportunity. She'll be in Albuquerque this week for a conference. We can pick her up on the way."

Lee flipped through the pages until he found a grainy picture. "Her? She doesn't look like much," he said.

"Temperance Brennan. She's a bioarcheologist working at the Jeffersonian in Washington DC. Top of her field. Solid test scores. Excellent health."

Lee nodded. "What's the hitch?"

"Her guide. The Jeffersonian couldn't keep one for her for more than a month at a time, so the FBI gave her one of theirs as part of her consulting package. He keeps a close watch on her, and he's a sharp shooter. You might as well consider him a bodyguard."

Lee grinned. "Sounds like fun."

In the back room, Eppes was telling his story to Spencer. His words were hard to make out for the crying. Alex sighed. Life had been easier when she'd been forging Munch paintings. Good money, better hours, a lovely loft apartment in Boston. She really hoped all this was going to be worth it.


End file.
